Updated: 2025
Sports Personality of The Year: Where to Bet
Place Free Bets on BBC SPOTY 2025:
Betting Tips on BBC SPOTY
Betting on BBC Sports Personality of the Year 2025 is part of the bookies’ novelty and special bets market. It is similar with betting on Eurovision or the winner of Britain’s Got Talent.
As usual, the best odds come with the greatest risk and that is in the beginning of the year all the way up until the award show in December. At the beginning of the year, bookies generally list the sportspeople that had great successes or have shown remarkable potential in the previous years. As the year progresses and the sportspeople start performing, their results influence their odds.
The odds drop drastically during the BBC Sports Personality of the Year award in December when the list of sportspeople is whittled down to only a few contenders. It is from this shortlist of nominees that the public votes and determines the winner.
Betting Strategy
First of all, there is no magic bullet betting strategy to guarantee you a winning bet slip. There are too many variables to take into account:
- The sportsperson’s performance through the year will vary, it can have its highs and its lows
- Injuries that may occur
- Who will the independent panel put on the shortlist of nominees?
- Who will the public ultimately vote and decide the winner?
On top of those variables, there is also the fact the BBC Sports Personality of the Year includes all the sporting events. Even to the fiercest bettor it is nearly impossible to keep track, on an individual basis, of all the sports persons events and performances throughout a year.
Betting Tips
But that bettor, whether a huge sports fan or none at all, can still follow some basic tips to increase the chances of winning a bet on BBC SPOTY awards:
- Look at the shortlist of nominees from recent BBC SPOTY editions. Notice if the same name appears throughout the years. For example, Lewis Hamilton won the awards in 2014. Since then, he has been shortlisted each year except in 2016. This year he is ranked first in the Formula 1 standings. The bookies reflect that success, by giving Lewis Hamilton odds that put him in the top 5 favoured to win the awards this year.
- Study what the bookies have on offer and their odds. You might not know who some of the sports persons are. Yet, they may have 20/1 odds of winning the BBC SPOTY.
- Read sports magazines and newspapers, hard copy or online. Notice the names that show the most often and the reason for it. By this stage you should have your own shortlist of contenders to take things further.
- Go through the contenders’ social media and have a look at their following base. Go through the comments to see what the public says. It is not entirely accurate, but it is the public who votes the winner after all. So a sportsperson with a massive, active, and positive following base does have better chance to win the SPOTY than someone not very well known.
- Look at your shortlisted contenders outside the world of sports. This is also a criterion the expert panel uses when shortlisting nominees. If a sportsperson has expressed bad or illegal behaviour, this will negatively impact the public’s opinion.
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GolfThe History of BBC SPOTY
In April 1954 began Sportsview, the first regular sports programme televised by BBC. It was suggested and created by television executive Paul Fox. That same year, Paul Fox came up with the idea to create a yearly BBC Sports Personality of the Year award.
As described by Mr Fox himself, to vote for a winner in the inaugural year of the award, one had to:
- Buy the Radio Times magazine and find the coupon for the award
- Fill in the coupon with the chosen winner
- Send the coupon in by post
More coupons came in than expected so Paul Fox took home three or four bags of them and had his young children help to tally up the results. Somewhat surprisingly, the man who had set a world record in the 5000m race, Chris Chataway, came out as a winner against the first man to run a mile under 4 minutes, Roger Bannister. About 14,500 votes were cast in the first ever BBC SPOTY.
It’s been over 60 years since the inaugural edition of BBC Sports Personality Of The Year award which drew in 14,500 votes. Presently, the ceremony draws in millions of votes and it has expanded into eight different award categories, with BBC SPOTY still the main one. Needless to say, in the last 60 years the world of sport has seen some drastic changes. Yet, the BBC Sports Personality Of The Year award has remained a constant, with millions of people turning in each December to see the winner announced.
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