Lasseters Sportsbook Goes Big Brother Crazy

Friday May 09, 2008

In an extraordinary move one online bookmaker has gone mental on Big Brother offering a whole new range of betting options on the minute of the popular show.

While retaining basic voting choices like who will win the Channel Ten juggernaut and which housemate will be next to be evicted, Lasseters Sportsbook is offering a plethora of new markets.

These include which state will produce the winning housemate, and a range of 'head to head' battles; where punters choose which of various pairs of housemates will be booted from the Gold Coast compound first.

Punters can also bet on who will win the weekly Friday Night Games on the site.

The move follows the featuring of a bookmaker on the first show of the series, giving real time odds as housemates were introduced. Odds on the show have fluctuated wildly in the first two weeks with the favourite to win changing almost every day.

Gerard Daffy from Lasseters Sportsbook says he's paying more attention to the show because Big Brother is far and away the biggest Reality TV show from a bookmakers perspective.

"It's the Melbourne Cup of entertainment - people might not follow horses all year but come Melbourne Cup time there's so much media focus they get to form their own opinion and bet accordingly," says Daffy.

Daffy says younger gamblers like the fact they can turn their opinion into dollars.

"People can go onto the forums and knowledge up and take advantage of bookies errors," says Daffy.

The bookmaker says online gambling sites often simply follow each other's prices rather than looking at how things are moving in the house.

"We've got a classic this week where it looked like Bianca was certain to be packing her bags yet in the space of 48 hours not only has she turned the public into being fans of hers but also the housemates and it's now Dixie who's under pressure," says Daffy.

"From a book makers perspective if I'm not on top of that we could well have had Dixie at a much longer price than she really should be."