Oscars Betting Sites | Oscars Betting 2025

Best Picture

Betting on which film will land the biggest Oscar of them all is the biggest event at the Academy Awards. This market can swing any which way, and three recent awards have been won by the second favorite on the night (Moonlight, The Shape of Water, Green Book).

Best Actor & Best Actress

The Best Actor award goes to an actor in a leading role, with the Best Actor odds showing a strong preference for actors who played a real person, rather than a fictional character. Most recently, Cillian Murphy won Best Actor for his portrayal of J. Robert Oppenheimer, who oversaw the Manhattan Project during World War II.

Like Best Actor, Best Actress is for a leading role, and the betting often becomes most clear after the Screen Actor's Guild Awards. In the past 10 years, seven actresses have won Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Leading Role and the Best Actress Oscar in the same year. The most recent was Michelle Yeoh for Everything Everywhere All at Once in 2022. 

Lately, the Golden Globes have become a weaker indicator of the Best Actress winner, with only four actresses winning both awards in the same year (Julianne Moore, Frances McDormand, Renee Zellweger, Brie Larson) since 2014.

Best Director

There are few surprises in this Oscars betting market. Favorites win often, and at odds-on, like Alfonso Cuaron for Roma in 2019. 

Five of the last seven Best Director winners also won for Best Picture (Oppenheimer, Everything Everywhere All at Once, Nomadland, Parasite, The Shape of Water).

Best Original Song

Odds on this Academy Award are popular because so many well-known music artists are in typically in the running. Recently, Billie Eilish, H.E.R., Elton John, Lady Gaga, Sam Smith, John Legend, and Adele have been among the winners.

Track Other Major Film Awards

Our top Oscars betting tip is to follow the three preceding major awards at the beginning of the calendar year. The biggest mover of the Oscars betting odds are the three other major awards, which will all take place at the beginning of the year: Golden Globes (Jan. 5, 2025), Critics Choice Awards (Jan. 12, 2025), and the SAG Awards (Feb. 23, 2025).

The Critics Choice Awards have proven most predictable, their winners of Best Actor, Best Actress, Best Director and Best Picture going on to win the Oscar about 60% of the time between 2000-2021.

Best Actor at the Screen Actors Guild Awards has won 81% of the corresponding Oscars from 1999 to 2021. Ten of 11 actors who swept the Screen Actors Guild and Golden Globes also landing the Oscar.

Best Actresses from the Screen Actors Guild's score best at the Oscars too, with an 82% strike-rate from 2009 to 2021.

It's worth noting that only one Best Actor winner (Adrien Brody) and two Best Actress winners (Olivia Colman and Marion Cotillard) in the last 20 years had not won at least one of the big three first.

This is not a foolproof Oscars betting system, but it does narrow the field of odds.

Pay Attention to Larger Cultural Trends

The next tip to consider when betting on the Academy Awards is to follow social issues, and other Oscars trends.

For example, 14 Best Actor winners since 2000 won the Oscar for portraying real historical figures, like J. Robert Oppenheimer, Winston Churchill, and Abraham Lincoln. This has been a good system for betting for both Best Actor and Best Actress, though there was a lull in historical Oscar-winning roles for the later from 2011-2019.

In 2016, #Oscarssowhite, or Oscars Whitewash was a movement protesting against the lack of Oscar nominees of color. The Academy stressed it would address this, and there were non-white nominations the following year in 2017. Moonlight, an independently-made film about a young black man, won Best Picture that year.

In the wake of 2017's #MeToo movement, elevating female voices became a common rallying cry, both in Hollywood and around the world. Like many major social issues, the movement was reflected in Oscar nominations.

Golden Globe Best Actor winner James Franco, a short price in the Oscars odds that year, was not nominated after being accused of sexually exploitative behavior. Best Picture was won by a film with a dominant female lead (The Shape of Water) for the first time since 2004.