Oscars Betting Sites | Oscars Betting 2025

Best Picture

Betting on which film will land the biggest Oscar is the biggest event at the Academy Awards. This market can swing any which way. The second favorite won three recent awards 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 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 portraying 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 (Julianne Moore, Frances McDormand, Renee Zellweger, Brie Larson) winning both awards in the same year 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 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 typically in the running. Billie Eilish, H.E.R., Elton John, Lady Gaga, Sam Smith, John Legend, and Adele have been among the winners recently.

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

The three other major awards are the biggest mover of Oscars betting odds: the Golden Globes (Jan. 5, 2025), the Critics Choice Awards (Jan. 26, 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 went on to win the Oscar about 60% of the time between 2000 and 2021.

From 1999 to 2021, the Best Actor at the Screen Actors Guild Awards won 81% of the corresponding Oscars. Ten of 11 actors who swept the Screen Actors Guild and Golden Globes also won the Oscar. The Screen Actors Guild's best actresses also scored best at the Oscars, with an 82% strike rate from 2009 to 2021.

Pay Attention to Larger Cultural Trends

The next tip to consider when betting on the Academy Awards is to follow social issues and other Oscar 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 latter from 2011 to 2019.

In 2016, #Oscarssowhite, or Oscars Whitewash, was a movement protesting the lack of Oscar nominees of color. The Academy stressed that it would address this, and there were non-white nominations the following year (2017). Moonlight, an independent 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 in Hollywood and worldwide. 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.