We live in a bizarre world where people bet on the weirdest stuff ever. The betting world now apparently includes Game of Thrones related stuff as well, like who will sit on the Iron Throne and what not. People have been betting online for Game of Thrones right and left, but it looks like that’s about to stop. Betting lines concerning anything related to Game of Thrones are now being pulled down after the episodes of season 7 started to leak online. In addition to this, hackers have infiltrated the HBO servers and leaked a bunch of confidential information including scripts of Game of Thrones episodes. Plus after the recent episode 4, ‘The Spoils of War’, leak, and also the one that happened yesterday, betting lines seem to have faced the brunt of it all.
Business insider reports having spoken to Pat Morrow, the Head Oddsman at the online gambling and betting site Bovada. Bovada has had Game of Thrones betting lines for the past two years and they’ve been going pretty well so far but not anymore. Morrow, who himself is a Game of Thrones fan, has read the books several times as well. He’s also always taken regular interest in the fan theories over at Reddit. Talking about the betting lines for Game of Thrones, Morrow said, “There are a lot of different things that drive it. Part of it, I’d say the last couple of seasons – before the TV show not just caught up with the book, but then passed it – I was able to work off of book knowledge. After the fact it was the combination of not just my own knowledge, but also scouring the internet for the best fan theories, and trying to separate the ones that sound fun, and the ones that seem to be a bit more credible.”
“And then of course, the last part is profiling. I often use this example, especially when we’re talking about an entertainment setting like this, but someone betting – whether it’s Los Angeles, or someone’s betting from a part of the world were we know they’re filming this, we would take a wager like that much more seriously than we would of someone betting in Iowa City. And that’s not to bemoan the great people of Iowa City, but as far as I know, they’re not doing any filming there. So, there’s not the kind of hard math that we prefer to use when we deal with sporting events.”
They also have a bit of irregular fun sometimes with the betting lines, Morrow said. For instance, they put Hodor on the Iron Throne once.
“Last season, we put Hodor up on the Iron Throne at 5,000 to one, and took a few bets for that because we thought we’d have a laugh. And I guess it was worth it for the pay out as well. We tried to post more serious stuff this year. But unfortunately those leaks have hampered us a little bit,” he said.
The reason Bovada had to take down their Game of Thrones betting lines was after Morrow discovered that there were a bunch of sources online that were leaking scripts and spoilers, especially a youtube channel that gave too much detail. This forced Morrow to have the betting lines taken down.
He’s not revealing his sources, but as a result, based on his YouTube channel, the entire season has kind of been spoiled, so it’s forced us to pull everything down for the remainder of the season,” Morrow said.
With the hype surrounding Game of Thrones this season, which is supposed to be one of the most exciting seasons ever, spoilers and episode leaks have been going around far too much. It’s nice to see that there are people in the world who don’t want to spoil such a good series for those of us who would rather watch the show than get all spoilers beforehand. You can read the Business Insider interview here, where the possible youtube channel that released spoilers is mentioned.
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