Well, an apology of sorts is called for after the weekend’s events. In my original article on Saturday morning, I had got wind of a rumoured running order, and advised Storm Lee and John Adeleye to be eliminated as a result.
When I was told not to take that running order on trust, this article was pulled and a replacement one put in its place. In the new article, I didn’t put forward Storm Lee to be eliminated because I had based this original advice on him being the first to perform, before another rock song.
When this did prove to be the case on Saturday night, I had to back him at 13/2 to be first eliminated this week, alongside my bet on John Adeleye. Sure enough, it proved to be a winner. There is a screen grab of the original article at the bottom of this article. Click on the thumbnail to view it.
I also made money on laying Wagner in the elimination market – betting that he would not be the first to go. I started doing this as soon as I heard on Saturday afternoon that he would be covering Tom Jones.
With the departure of Diva Fever, Nicolo and Storm Lee, Wagner is now the undisputed king of the novelty acts on the show, and we’ve been promised a big performance next week for what is rumoured to be an 80s theme.
Betfair also got round to an active market during the Sunday sing-off. This was where I made plenty of money backing Jedward against Lucie in Week 5 last year. On Sunday evening, thousands were being traded in spilt-second moments as Diva Fever and Belle Amie performed and the judges decided.
You could get 1/3 Belle Amie, and in hindsight, that was free money. Getting rid of the novelty wildcard (in a show with a better novelty wildcard) instead of the girl band manufactured at bootcamp stage was a no-brainer for producers. They didn’t even try to make any suspense out of it.
Looking forward to next week, it’s hard to know whether Belle Amie will receive an appreciable sympathy bounce: girl bands can be immune to it, and they did badly last week despite a good draw. However, Paije does look in danger of imminent elimination – I felt he just avoided the bottom three this week.
More next weekend.
Original article last Saturday
Is your expectation to make a profit on a week by week basis or over the whole series? It seems that the new format has made it much harder to predict.
I’m surprised at the addition of the wildcards and double exits. The producers have lost a lot of control with the automatic exit of the act with the least votes and it’s much harder to manipulate.
Hi Nick, you make two good points. I agree with you that the new format has made it much harder to predict, as stated in my preview of the Week 2 elimination market. And as a gambler, I have to accept that you win some and lose some. No one wins every time, so there will be losing weeks, inevitably. A profit over the whole series is therefore the aim, and Weeks 5-7, which will have a judge-based single elimination based on the bottom two in the public vote, may offer the best opportunities. What do you think?
I think the first few weeks are too volatile. I would imagine that the changes were required by ITV as there is no way the producer’s would want to lose that much control. Head of Entertainment bods at any broadcaster are notoriously bad at making changes just for the sake of it, Arlene Phillips being a victim of this habit on Strictly for example. I think the extra factor in all of this is tabloid column inches in the week before the show, Big Brother voting was always driven by the tabloids. X Factor is less influenced by this due to the shorter voting period but I think it is still a factor.
Wise words here Nick. As mentioned before, things should settle down for Weeks 5-7. That marks November as the crucial period for betting on X Factor for those inclined.
It will be interesting to see the power of the tabloids this weekend. The Sun has published two negative stories about Wagner on consecutive days, today and yesterday. Yesterday, a taped phone call of Wagner slating the show was put on The Sun’s website. Not good for him but he did say what everyone thinks so not disastrous. However, today is a drug story, nothing major but a big issue to young Mums and the comments are very negative.
Well, if rumours are to be believed Wagner is supposedly performing Relax this weekend – if true it doesn’t sound like they’re exactly targeting the young mum vote. My hunch is that the kind of demographic who enjoy Wagner’s presence on the show might actually be more likely to pick up the phone when they see him smoking a spliff and slagging off Simon Cowell. I may be completely wrong, though.