Celebrity Dead Pools
Gambling is big business. In 2014, US gambling revenues were nearly $69 billion. And that’s just the legal stuff that is tracked by the industry. Even if you're not taking trips to Vegas or buying weekly lottery tickets, you're probably toying with the small stuff -- fantasy leagues, NCAA brackets, Super Bowl. Yep, we love to gamble and we’ll find all sorts of inventive ways to do it. But there’s one betting game you may not be familiar with even though lots of people are playing it—the celebrity dead pool.
Celebrity dead pools are where fantasy sports leagues meet pop culture. The concept is simple. At the beginning of the year, you pick a slate of celebrities, usually ten; that you think will die within that calendar year. If one of your …show more content…
And when the celebrity death scene is as active as it has been this year, keeping things up-to-date is no easy task. A key challenge is determining just what classifies someone as a celebrity. Each pool has its own method of deciding. Some require that the person's obituary be carried in an "approved publication." Others have a panel of judges that decide. Whatever method is used, there are appeals to review and arguments to settle over whether or not a person is well known enough to be considered a celebrity. The decision can make or break it for a player since being the only person to pick a certain celebrity can score big …show more content…
In the 1400’s speculation on the death of the Pope got so out of hand that it was banned. An 1885 work by Guy de Maupassant, Bel-Ami, refers to an actual game based on guessing when various politicians would die and it's not at all uncommon for celebrity death pools get shout outs in today’s TV shows and films. In the 1998 Clint Eastwood movie, “The Dead Pool”, Dirty Harry must work against the clock to stop a pool where celebrities become murder targets. FOX TV’s current hit “Second Chance,” and HBO’s “Sex, Drugs, and Rock and Roll” have both made reference to the games and while it’s got no release date yet, “Killing Hasselhoff,” a movie based on a death pool, wrapped production some time
Celebrity dead pools are where fantasy sports leagues meet pop culture. The concept is simple. At the beginning of the year, you pick a slate of celebrities, usually ten; that you think will die within that calendar year. If one of your …show more content…
And when the celebrity death scene is as active as it has been this year, keeping things up-to-date is no easy task. A key challenge is determining just what classifies someone as a celebrity. Each pool has its own method of deciding. Some require that the person's obituary be carried in an "approved publication." Others have a panel of judges that decide. Whatever method is used, there are appeals to review and arguments to settle over whether or not a person is well known enough to be considered a celebrity. The decision can make or break it for a player since being the only person to pick a certain celebrity can score big …show more content…
In the 1400’s speculation on the death of the Pope got so out of hand that it was banned. An 1885 work by Guy de Maupassant, Bel-Ami, refers to an actual game based on guessing when various politicians would die and it's not at all uncommon for celebrity death pools get shout outs in today’s TV shows and films. In the 1998 Clint Eastwood movie, “The Dead Pool”, Dirty Harry must work against the clock to stop a pool where celebrities become murder targets. FOX TV’s current hit “Second Chance,” and HBO’s “Sex, Drugs, and Rock and Roll” have both made reference to the games and while it’s got no release date yet, “Killing Hasselhoff,” a movie based on a death pool, wrapped production some time