Originally published on May 29, 2006. View Original Site »
BY NIKKI WALLER
While you, the ever-diligent South Floridian, stockpile hurricane supplies and prepare your shutters for this year’s storm season, strange forces speculate on your misery.
Online and around the world, people are betting on the Atlantic hurricane season, wagering on how many strong storms will make landfall this year, and at what strength.
At Internet gambling sites where users plunk down $25 to bet on anything from whether J.Lo is pregnant to who will be the first human on Mars, there’s a simmering market in whether a category 3, 4 or 5 hurricane will hit Florida.
It sounds crazy and — for residents of Hurricane Alley — plain mean to seek profit from massive destruction. Yet such bets are brisk business for sites that offer proposition, or prop, betting: wagers on anything from who will win the next American Idol to when avian flu arrives in the United States.
Several sites are now offering 1 to 5 odds that a category three storm or higher will hit the United States this year, meaning that a $5 bet would pay out just $1.
Those numbers closely match official forecasts from the National Hurricane Center, which predicted last Monday that four to six major storms will make landfall by December.
Oddsmakers use meteorological data, including Colorado State University professor William Gray’s annual forecast for the Atlantic hurricane season, as well as historical data to determine the likelihood of storm strikes.
THE PROBABILITIES
Weather forecasts, which are based on probability, lend themselves easily to oddsmaking. But professional forecasters, who view their job as a public service, say that’s not what they have in mind when they issue predictions.
”What’s sad about this is essentially people are placing bets on an issue that affects people’s lives. That’s kind of sad,” said National Weather Service spokesman Greg Romano.
”Forecasts are there for people to help protect themselves, their lives and their property,” he said.
Mickey Richardson, CEO of BetCris.com, a Costa-Rica based site offering several hurricane-related propositions, said the idea of betting on calamities seemed depraved at first. But customers demanded the wagers.
”We had to wrestle with it, some people view it as a morbid thing to offer,” he said of his site’s storm-season bets. “But we can’t stop hurricanes. There’s been a true interest in it from the public.”
Richardson, along with CEOs of other sites, including wagerweb.com, said they’ve refused to take bets on the amount of destruction or casualties.
Christopher Costigan, who operates prop bet-focused news site Gambling911.com from his condo in Miami Beach, said bets are not intended to make light of the threat of storms or detract from the importance of hurricane safety and preparation.
”Anyone who lives down here knows we’re living with risk,” he said.
Proposition bets have long been a staple of gambling in Europe. Such wagers became popular stateside during the 2004 presidential race, when offshore gambling sites began offering odds on election results.
Props are the scratch-off lotto tickets of the online gambling world — a relatively cheap and easy means of instant gratification.
NOVICE BETTORS
Props draw a lot of first-time bettors, mainly pop-culture junkies in their 20s and 30s who aren’t interested in traditional sports betting.
These bettors want to feel as though they’re part of an event, whether it’s the Super Bowl or a celebrity divorce, said Andy Meyers, a University of Memphis psychology professor who studies gambling behavior.
Someone in Nebraska is unlikely to face a Category 4 storm, but wagering on that storm can help justify — and enliven — hours spent watching wall-to-wall coverage on CNN and The Weather Channel.
”Now I get to count how many storms, how big they are and when they hit. Gambling … draws you into a level of involvement you might not otherwise have in activities,” Meyers said.
All gambling is a coping mechanism, often fraught with unhealthy results, said Meyers. For people living in the hurricane zone, betting may lessen the anxiety of living with potential disaster. ”If I live in Florida, where hurricanes have become a really unpleasant fact of life, maybe I get to perceive them differently because I win,” Meyers said. “The next hurricane that hits, maybe my $25 turns into $250.”
Nevertheless, double-checking our storm supplies and emergency plans might be a wiser way to attain peace of mind.
With predictions calling for a rough season, there’s little money to be made by betting on a coming storm. Gambling911’s Costigan, who doesn’t gamble himself, would bet against a storm strike, but purely out of hope.
”I’d bet on the no, hoping that my bet will keep the storms away,” he said. “And maybe I’d make money.”
Published: 2006-05-29
Bettor's enjoyed a good week with many favorites winning, especially in baseball. Sunday alone in baseball there were 13 defined favorites which won, so with results like that bookmakers generally have a tough time of it.
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