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Now, building upon the fame of the effort, offshore Internet betting sites have targeted the contest, enabling gamers from around the world to wager on their favorite 14-year-old, bespectacled word nerd.
The offering was popular, according to online gaming insiders.
"If it's a competition, and it's on TV, people want to bet on it,'' said Mike Staley, spokesman for Sportsbook.com, one of the Internet sites that handicapped the contest.
At one point, the Sportsbook.com had anointed Scottsdale, Ariz., eighth-grader Jonathan Horton as the odds-on favorite. Horton made the top 15, and then flopped.
Cagey Veterans
Staley said, "He made three previous trips, and he was sixth place last year. Besides, at 14 years old, he's a cagey veteran.''According to Reed Richards, director of public relations for BetUS.com, by the finals, the site will have had over 5,000 bettors. "With an average bet of $10 it’s better than bingo, because you can see it live instead of just watching the numbers. It makes me wonder how many parents of the kids of the spelling bee are putting something down," said Richards.
When a long shot comes in, serious money can change hands.
The odds-makers spend hours and hours looking over sports team rosters to make their picks, but have less information to help them discern which middle-school kid will pull out an upset.
These gambling sites, long the domain of males, have become a lot more female-friendly with what BetUS.com's Richards calls "pop culture gambling.'' The spelling bee game is part of that effort.
"We started two years ago with the reality TV shows,'' Richards says.” Now we've expanded it to celebrity divorces and picking the date of Lindsay Lohan's next car crash.''
BetUS.com didn't pick individual winners, but went with a formula they established two years ago. They asked whether the winner would be male or female (girls were an even bet at 1-to-1), whether the winner would be home schooled (3-to-1 yes) and whether the champion would be wearing glasses (3-to-2 yes).
"For some reason, people love that line,'' Richards says. "Over 70 percent thought the winner would be wearing glasses.''
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