American Idol Season 11 Betting Odds - Finale Day

Tonight is the big night when Phillip Phillips squares off against Jessica Sanchez in the final performance round of Season 11 of American Idol. But does that really matter? I checked todays betting odds, and the Bovada odds have not changed from last Friday, but on Pinnacle Phillip's betting odds to win keep getting lower (i.e. he becomes a stronger favorite) as Jessica's odds keep increasing (she becomes more of a long shot to win.) Jessica's Pinnacle betting odds have increased from 3.74:1 on Friday to 3.850 on Saturday to 4.160:1 today. Phillip has seen his odds lower from 1.313:1 on Friday to 1.300:1 on Saturday to 1.267:1 today. It seems as more and more people are betting, more and more people are pretty sure Phillip is going to win.

The first sign we will see after Wednesday's big results show will be the first week download numbers for both Phillip's and Jessica's singles, and how they place on iTunes. If we remember last year, both Scotty and Lauren had pretty strong singles sales the week after the finale which helped boost their singles on radio and hence drive album sales. It will be important for both Phillip and Jessica have good sales on their singles which can be a good indication of future album sales:

Over the last 4 seasons, we can see that 5 of the 8 occurrences, the contestant sold more albums their first week than downloads, sometimes by just a small amount (Crystal, David A.) and sometimes by a lot more (Scotty, David C., and most of all by Adam.) I think the biggest "disappointments" are when the artists do not sell as many albums first week as they do downloads, especially for a winner (Lee and Kris being the worst culprits). Lauren Alaina did not sell as many copies of "Wildflower" as her "Like My Mother Does" single, but her actual number of 69K still beat the first week sales numbers of both Lee and Crystal from Season 9, and was not too far below Kris's "winning" sales number from Season 8. That is one point where being "runner-up" is better than "winner" since the expectations are not set as high.

So soon it will be time to see where Phillip and Jessica's numbers end up on this same sales chart. In reality, that may be more important that who "wins" tomorrow night. So a lot is riding on what single Jimmy and Interscope Records can find for both of them to perform tonight and how well they deliver them. Hopefully they know not to pick a known big cover hit (Lee's cover of U2's "A Beautiful Day") but find a decent original for each of them. Even "I Love You This Big" was not the greatest original for Scotty, but it was still an unknown original and he performed it pretty well on the show so it could become a good hit single for him. Let us hope Jimmy and the corporate Idol machine can do the same for Phillip and Jessica.