American Idol Top 5 Betting Odds

Last night, it was interesting to see how they set up the pairings for the results. With the first two pairs (Elise Testone vs. Jessica Sanchez, Hollie Cavanagh versus Joshua Ledet) it was pretty obvious who would be in the Bottom 3, and it was really the third member of the Bottom 3 that people were unsure who it might be (Elise Testone, Hollie Cavanagh and who?) We found out the answer was Skylar Laine, and she sees the nice trend she was having with her betting odds disappear. After almost approaching Jessica Sanchez as the second favorite, she has now fallen to the fourth most likely winner behind Joshua Ledet on both the Bovada and Pinnacle betting sites. Now, although Hollie Cavanagh is now the far and away highest odds contestant (40:1 and 56:1 odds), Skylar now has the second highest betting odds at (7:1 and 9:1). She is still definitely not as long of a long shot as Hollie, but she loses the nice momentum she had been gaining.

The other contestant who benefited last night besides Joshua was Phillip Phillips, who despite continuing to receive some of the lowest WhatNotToSing scores continues to never land in the Bottom 3.

With the Wednesday night performances ranked by descending "Approval Rating" all the other contestants had one good score (>50) and one bad score (<50) except for Phillip who had a 44 on "The Stone" and a 32 on "Fat Bottomed Girls". If you average the two WNTS scores for the night for all contestants the rank ends up:

1) Jessica: (77, 46) 61.5
2) Hollie: (79, 38) 58.5
3) Elise: ( 70, 43) 56.5
4) Skylar: (66, 39) 52.5
5) Joshua: (71, 30) 50.5
6) Phillip : (44, 32) 38

All the other contestants averaged between 50 and 62 except Phillip who averaged a sad 38. In fact the Bottom 3 this week had the 2nd, 3rd and 4th highest average WNTS ratings for the week. It is obviously not a good predictor this week!

American Idol DialIdol Data - Now with Two Lines Per Contestant!

The American Idol DialIdol raw votes get a lot more complicated now that each contestant has two voting lines. I always wondered why someone decided to pick the first phone number or the second one. Right after the show ended I tried calling both numbers for two different contestants and I got through on all 4 lines. I was hoping to see which ones were busier, but it seems to be random. For example from the raw DialIdol votes, Elise Testone's and Jessica Sanchez's second lines are being used the most for them, but for every one else their first line is more used for voting. I am not sure what to make of it. I had to check last week's numbers to see how well they predicted the Bottom 3, and although it predicted Colton Dixon's poor voting profile pretty well, it did not predict Hollie Cavanagh or Elise Testone being in the Bottom 3 at all. Hollie had the highest number of busy signals and the third highest busy percentage, while Elise had the highest busy percentage and the third highest number of busy signals. Yet, they both ended up in the Bottom 3 with Colton.

Instead the Bottom 3 was much better guessed by the Idol Chatter poll takers last week where they picked Elise, then Colton, then either Jessica or Hollie for the Bottom 3, so let's see what they are saying this week:

As of right now (90 minutes after the show ended) the most likely pick is again Elise, followed by Hollie, and then Phillip with Jessica close behind him. It sure is getting hard to predict these things. I can again see Hollie and Elise in the Bottom 3, but since Hollie performed last, I doubt she will be going home. Yet again Jessica did not get to perform last, in fact she went first so maybe she will end up in the Bottom 3. I will be curious to see if Phillip may even see his first appearance there. It would really average everything out if he finally landed in the Bottom 3, so that not even Phillip looks eternally safe.

Comparing Phone Dialing Versus Online Voting Rates

The stupid 50 vote limit on American Idol Facebook voting is crazy when they do not limit it on phone voting so I thought I would do a little experiment. I timed how long it took me to vote both ways, to see how long it takes to use up the 50 vote Facebook limit and then figure out how quickly I could vote using the "Redial" button on my home phone.

I logged onto Facebook and I was able to cast 3 votes in 40 seconds since luckily I did not type in a bad captcha code on those first three tries. With a little practice I was able to get my 3 vote speed down to 34 seconds, but I did type a bad captcha code maybe 1 out of 10 tries. So if I say I averaged 3 votes in 36 seconds, that is 1 vote in 12 seconds or 5 per minute. So it only takes about 10 minutes of constant Facebook voting to reach your 50 vote limit. Unfortunately, the stupid Facebook application does not tell you when you reach your limit, so folks could do it for a long time and not realize they are done and voting for no reason. Let me just tell you if you are voting online for more than 15 minutes you probably have reached the 50 vote limit already. It is then time to use somebody else's Facebook account (or create multiple ones if you believe in that sort of thing.)

Using the phone was much easier, but you do have to wait a second or two between calls to drop the phone line (yes, I use a land line!) Nevertheless, I was able to get a nice rhythm going pressing, OFF, ON, Redial, and waiting for it to say "Thank you for voting for contestant...". Even with a 1 second pause after hanging up I could make a call in about 10 seconds and could cast 6 votes in a minute, slightly faster than the online voting rate, but you can do it forever. In fact I could theoretically phone vote the 50 vote online maximum in about 8 minutes. If I were obsessed I could have voted for 2 straight hours or 120 minutes, so I could conceivable have voted 720 times if I could keep up my 6 votes a minute rate. If the 53 million votes they talked last week about were all voted by crazed fans who voted 700 times, that only becomes 75,000 people.

All American Idol Album Sales Drop - But next week starts May!

Kelly Clarkson's 'Stronger' finally surpasses the 750K mark, but on a down week for all Idol sales, with sales dropping 26% to be 11K for the week (756K total.) That was good enough to put her at #39 on the chart, but that is the lowest she has been since back in 2011. Scotty McCreery's "Clear As Day" is again the second highest seller, but this time with only 6K in sales, good enough to put him at #73 on the charts. Daughtry and James Durbin also sold about 3,000 units last week to stay in the Top 200, and none of the other Idols even made the chart.

Next week Carrie Underwood will help boost Idol sales with the release of her new album "Blown Away".

Over the Weekend American Idol Betting Odds Changes

I always find it unusual how the betting odds can change over the weekend for who will win American Idol, but sure enough they have changed a bit since Friday, at least on the Pinnacle site. To be consistent I will continue to average them with the more static odds on the Bovada site, but there has definitely been a shift.

On Friday, both Hollie Cavanagh and Elise Testone were tied for being the long shot to win the competition, but now, for some unknown reason, the betting powers have decided that Elise is the bigger long shot, with whopping 78.88:1 odds on the Pinnacle site, whereas Hollie's have dropped to 51.730:1. (They sure have plenty of precision too!) And whereas Joshua Ledet and Skylar Laine both saw their Pinnacle odds increase from Friday to today (8.0:1 to 8.9:1 for Joshua and 4.5:1 to 5.56:1 for Skylar), Phillip Phillips and Jessica Sanchez both saw their odds drop slightly (1.833:1 to 1.763:1 for Phillip, and 4.5:1 to 3.65:1 for Jessica.) I would really like to know what happened over the weekend to make these numbers change, but who are we to ask?

Short Ladies Rule American Idol Season 11

With Colton Dixon's elimination on Thursday I realized something. Back in the beginning of March I made a silly little post about the heights of the Top 13 American Idol contestants for Season 11. And now that there are only 6 remaining, all 5 that I guessed to be the tallest are out of the competition: Jeremy Rosado, Jermaine Jones, Shannon Magrane, Erika Van Pelt and Colton Dixon. And all 3 of the short ladies remain! The only other people who have left have been the shortest guy (DeAndre Brackensick) and one medium height guy (Heejun Han). I am guessing that all three of Skylar Laine, Hollie Cavanagh and Jessica Sanchez must be about 5 feet tall or shorter, and Phillip and Joshua are both maybe 5' 9" to 5' 11". Elise is a little shorter than Phillip and Joshua, Maybe 5' 4" to 5' 6", a fairly average height woman. We have never had a Top 6 that was half composed of women 5 feet and under. In fact if we look over the past 4 years there have always been only 2 ladies in the Top 6 until this year when two thirds are female:

Number of ladies left competing

Actually for Season 8 they went from a Top 7 with two ladies to a Top 5 with only one when Lil Rounds was eliminated the same week as Anoop Desai. I could have put 1 1/2 there for Top 6 for Season 8 but that would have been weird. In the Top 5 for Season 8 there was only one lady, Allison Iraheta, who left at #4. Season 9 had two in the Top 6, but Siobhan Magnus left the next week, leaving only Crystal Bowersox in the Top 5, although she did finish as the runner up. Finally last year in Season 10, the Top 6 included two ladies, Haley Reinhart and Lauren Alaina who remained to end up #3 and #2 for the season. This year we will definitely have 3 ladies (and possibly 4) in the Top 5 with at least two of them being quite short!

Another interesting thought is that the last two female runners up, Lauren and Crystal, were both about 5' 6", and the only other Top 5 ladies since Season 8, Allison and Haley were about 5' 2" and did not make it to the finale. Hmmm, is that good news for Elise Testone?

American Idol Betting Odds - The Day After Colton Dixon's Elimination

Sure enough, Bovada and Pinnacle have both updated their betting odds for the final 6 contestants on American Idol now that Colton Dixon is no longer a contender. I was curious to see how the odds would drop on Phillip Phillips and he is now a 6:5 ( or 1.2:1) favorite on Bovada and 1.833:1 on Pinnacle. Last year at about this time Scotty McCreery and James Durbin were battling for the lowest odds and neither of them ever dropped below 5:4 odds until James was eliminated in the Top 4 round, upon which Scotty's odds dropped to an incredibly low 4:7 with only Lauren Alaina and Haley Reinhart remaining. I believe Colton would have been Phillip's "James" this year, and without him around Leesburg, Georgia, should definitely be preparing for a hometown visit!

Jessica Sanchez remains the one with the second lowest odds on Bovada now at 5:2, but Skylar Laine has closed the gap and is now 7:2 there and they are both 4.5:1 on Pinnacle. Personally, between the two of them I feel Skylar has the better chance of making the Top 3 unless Jessica has a quick personality overhaul pronto. Plus having a hometown visit to both Brandon, Mississippi, and Leesburg would be like a southern little town showdown. If we add in Joshua Ledet (15:2 on Bovada, 8:1 on Pinnacle and still a reasonable shot at Top 3) that would add the booming metropolis of Westlake, Louisiana, to finish off the Southern little town competition. Just think, if they all had water towers in their towns it could be the "Water Tower Town" competition, complete with a tailor made Idol song by last year's winner (hey, I have to plug Scotty's current single!) Frankly, unless some "Hollise" miracle occurs, the Top 3 will consist of Phillip and two of Skylar, Jessica and Joshua. Hollie Cavanagh and Elise Testone remain the 30:1 long shots on Bovada and 56:1 on Pinnacle after both had yet another visit to the Bottom 3, this time after Hollie's strongest performance night yet.

Colton Dixon is Eliminated on American Idol - Who can stop Phillip Phillips?

Wow, I thought Colton Dixon might end up in the Bottom 3, but I did not expect him to be the lowest vote receiver of all. And after this being the first week without the save (which caused the power voters to come out in force for every contestant), we also know there is no way either Elise Testone or Hollie Cavanagh will be winning the competition after both yet again fell into the Bottom 3. Even with all her fans power voting for her survival, Elise was again in the bottom 3. In fact she has been in the bottom so many times I had to steal the grid from the American Idol Season 11 Wikipedia page to remember them all. This makes 3 weeks in a row for Elise and the third week out of four for Hollie. Eventually time will run out for both of them.

At this point the only contestant with the momentum to beat Phillip might be Skylar Laine, who has not been in the Bottom 3 for four weeks. After being saved, Jessica Sanchez seems to have lost something  in her performances last night, so I do not think she has a chance of catching him either. And Joshua Ledet is a great vocalist, but I honestly cannot see him receiving more votes than Phillip. I thought Colton was his biggest competition, and without him there to help split some of the "female power votes" I cannot see anyone else stopping Phillip Phillips from winning. Phillip has the same likability and unassuming charm that helped Scotty McCreery win the title last year, but I am not sure if he will be able to produce as "mainstream accessible" of an album that can sell the million copies that 'Clear As Day' has. The only ones I thought could possibly sell a lot of albums were Colton, Skylar or Jessica (all with the proper coaching and custom selected songs).

Oh well, it will be interesting to see how the rest of the season pans out. I will curious to see the new betting odds too, since Colton had actually taken over as the odds on favorite in front of both Phillip and Jessica. Actually, Jessica was the odds on favorite before she was almost eliminated, and now Colton was eliminated after being the odds on favorite this week. Hmmm, maybe things are not so good for any odds on favorite! (You can ask Pia Toscano about that one too!)

Final American Idol Dial Idol Numbers and Preliminary 'What Not To Sing' Ratings

Good morning, American Idol fans! After a good night sleep I was anxious to see what the final DialIdol raw numbers looked like this morning and here they are. The first thing to note is the total number of votes cast using DialIdol which was over 59,000, over 30% more than the 45,000 cast last week. And if you look at the final busy percentages, only Phillip surpassed 10% last week (12.9%) but 4 out of the 7 this week were over 11.5% (Elise Testone at 12.5%, Jessica Sanchez at 12.4%, Hollie Cavanagh at 12.0% and Joshua Ledet at 11.5%).

This was definitely a much more busy night for voting. There were over 5,000 busy signals compared to the less than 3,000 last week, so Idol may have to open up two lines for these contestants! In terms of raw busy signals, Hollie, Jessica and Elise all broke 1,000 busy signals by themselves, and the lowest ones are Skylar Laine with 294, Colton Dixon with 405 and Joshua with 428. Let's see how accurate these numbers are for picking the Bottom 3, as they were last week (except for Colton who must not have many power voters using normal phone voting.)

The preliminary WhatNotToSing.com ratings are up for last night, and they have Hollie as having the best ('Rolling in the Deep' at 81) and 5th best ('Son of a Preacher Man' at 62) performances of the evening. However, last week Jessica's 'Stuttering' was considered the best performance and we know how well that helped her! Of course, I like to look at those scores as a trending graph so here it is with the 'Now' and 'Then' performances separated:

That may look like a big jumbled mess to some folk, but you can definitely see how Hollie has made a good 'arc' last night compared to the past few weeks to put her back in contention for at least the Top 3. Another contestant who had a big change last night was Joshua, who started out with a low 38 with his 'I Believe' before slightly redeeming himself with 'Change Is Gonna Come'. Now that Joshua performed last, all 7 remaining finalists have performed last except for Jessica. (Note to producers: if you actually want Jessica to do well with the votes you may consider giving her that coveted 'pimp spot' before she gets eliminated!) Jessica's scores this week were actually below what she had been getting, a 69 for 'Fallin' and a 53 for her 'Try a Little Tenderness'. That 53 is her lowest score of the season. Maybe being almost booted has shaken her confidence a little bit. Then there is Colton who took an even bigger dive, with a 43 for 'Bad Romance' and a 28 for 'September'. Ouch, talk about a bad shift in momentum. Tonight was a mixed bag for Phillip with his 'U Got It Bad' giving him a 78, his best rating of the season, but then his 'Midnight Hour' dropping him back to earth with a 45. Elise and Skylar stayed in the middle of the pack with the ratings which may not be a good thing, Elise with a 56 and then a 47, and Skylar with a 63 and then a 48. Middling in the pack is often what it takes to end up in the Bottom 3 and be eliminated. We will see in the results tonight!

American Idol Busy Signals Up With No More Save!

Well, tonight I voted using my trusty telephone and the American Idol toll-free 866 numbers, and I tell you that sure is a lot faster than typing in those illegible Captcha codes on the online voting. I cannot believe online votes are the only ones that are limited and they make their stupid captcha codes so hard to read! Why not just three letters or numbers like I've seen other places, or just doing a simple math problem (5 + 7).

In any case since the DialIdol score was pretty worthless last week (putting Joshua Ledet first and the almost eliminated Jessica Sanchez third from the bottom), I looked at some of their other numbers from last week to see which were best at trying to predict the real bottom 3 and Jessica ending up as the bottom in votes. One metric which seemed promising was the busy percentage from last week:

Here we see Jessica second from the bottom and Elise Testone next to her, although Joshua is third from the top (although he received the lowest number of overall votes so his sampling number is a lot lower:

If we look at the actual physical raw number of busy signals from last week let's see who had the lowest numbers: Jessica was the lowest at 217, then Joshua at 222 and then Colton Dixon at 258 and then Elise at 317. Colton is just at the bottom of the "busy percentage" because he had so many darn vote processed via DialIdol, over 8.8K calls and 8.56K votes. That is the only reason he is at the bottom of the percentage. If you look at Joshua he has the highest percentage only because he had so few votes cast for him, less than a third of what was cast for Colton. Let's look at the "busy percentage" and "raw votes" for this week (90 minutes after the show ended):

One thing to notice this week is that Jessica jumped from the bottom of the busy percentage to the top and is now duking it out with Hollie, Elise and Joshua for the highest busy percentage. If you look at the raw numbers, though, Hollie has far and away the most busy signals, almost 1,300 already which is much more than Phillip had last week (the one with the most busy signals). That means Hollie's fans are power voting via telephone quite diligently this week and she is probably pretty safe.  Elise and Jessica also have almost 1,000 busy signals so far tonight, so I bet they are pretty safe too. The contestant with the lowest actual number of busy signals right now is Skylar Laine with only 249 and Colton only has 266 despite having over 6,000 votes. It will be interesting to see what the final numbers are tomorrow morning after the west coast people get to vote.

The Idol Chatter voters were not very accurate last week, overwhelmingly thinking Hollie Cavanagh was history when she did not even hit the Bottom 3. So far they are guessing Elise is going home tomorrow by a pretty wide margin:

Until I saw the Dial Idol numbers, I too thought either Elise or Hollie was history tomorrow, but now I am wondering if perhaps Skylar or even Colton may be in trouble. Could Colton actually fall into the Bottom 3 tomorrow? That would leave Phillip as the only contestant never to be there this season. I think both Joshua and Skylar have a good shot of being in the Bottom 3, and I can easily see Elise there yet again next week with them. But Colton being there could be their "shocker" of the week, even if he does not end going home.

James Durbin's Album sales Soar, Everyone Else's Drop!

After appearing on American Idol last week, James Durbin saw sales of his "Memories of a Beautiful Disaster" shoot up by over 500% to 6,000 units for the week. That pushes his total to 106K and is his best sales week in months. Nonetheless the top two Idols in album sales this week are still the same two who are usually there, Kelly Clarkson and Scotty McCreery, both of which outsold James' album. Kelly's "Stronger" saw a 55% sales drop, but still sold 15K units, good enough for #27 on the BillBoard chart and brings her total to 746K. Scotty's "Clear As Day" dropped to 7,000 in sales for the week, which drops him to #65 on the BillBoard chart after two strong weeks following his Idol appearance and ACM New Artist award win.

After his big two week spike Scotty is back to selling about what he was before the Idol surge.

All the other Idols saw sales drops as well this week, from Daughtry selling 4K more (#117 BillBoard with total sales of 427K), Casey James with 3K more (#168 with total sales of 28K), Lauren Alaina with 2K more (271K total) and Kellie Pickler with another 1,000 in sales (67K total.) I see Elliott Yamin released a new album, but I did not even watch Idol back then!

Over the Weekend American Idol Betting Odds Shift

Now that the weekend is over and we are approaching a new Top 7 American Idol voting day the betting odds have shifted a little on both the Bovada and Pinnacle betting sites. I generated new graphs because, well, that is what I do for fun!

The interesting trend from Friday is that Phillip Phillips' odds are getting worse whereas Jessica Sanchez's are slightly improved. Colton Dixon's position as the odds on favorite remain steady. This week will be the big test since now everybody knows the save is used up and gone so now everybody has to vote to keep their favorites on the show. With Joshua Ledet's revisit to the Bottom 3, Skylar Laine has now passed him up in the odds which now places her as the fourth favorite. It will be interesting to see if either she or Joshua are in the Bottom 3 this week, as that will show who really is the 4th and 5th favorite. I am guessing Jessica will not be in the Bottom 3 this week, but next week her fans better keep voting hard to make sure she does fall then. I was curious if there would be any separation in the odds for Hollie Cavanagh and Elise Testone, but they remain together, both with 30:1 odds on Bovada and 49.48:1 odds on Pinnacle. I thought Elise would be in worse shape after ending up in the Bottom 3 even with the favored "pimp spot" performing last along with piles of praise from the judges. Maybe the producers will let her perform last yet again since they like doing so.

New American Idol Betting Odds after the 'Shocking Results' from Last Night

There is nothing like some good drama to shake up the American Idol betting odds! This year is even more interesting than last year since this year the 'shocking elimination' was not an elimination but a save, so the saved front runner can remain in the competition. Of course, I mean Jessica Sanchez this year compared to Pia Toscano last year. Neither had been in the bottom 3 before their 'shocking elimination', but since the judges still had the save this year (as opposed to wasting it on Casey Abrams last year), Jessica can stay in the competition. The interesting thing is she is still the most likely female in the competition to win the whole thing, but now she has slipped into being the third most likely winner behind Colton Dixon and Phillip Phillips in the betting odds. Both Pinnacle Sports and Bovada have updated their odds so I could pull some new numbers and generate new charts:

My logarithmic trend plot is most interesting since we can now see how the odds have changed from March 5 until today April 13 (Friday the 13th!) Jessica and Phillip were the two most likely to win back in early March, but with Phillip's weekly Dave Matthews impersonations and Jessica's being the lowest vote receiver last night, Colton has slowed made his way to be the most likely winner. Being in the Bottom 3 also did not help Joshua Ledet or Elise Testone, neither of which now has much of a chance of winning the competition. Joshua now slips behind Skylar in the betting odds, and Elise and Hollie are now battling it out to be the long shot. Bovada now has both Holie and Elise as 30:1 long shots and Pinnacle Sports has them both at 46:1. I was pretty amazed that Elise was in the Bottom 3 after performing last on Wednesday, but it appears like that did not help. My guess is she is the most likely one to leave next week after now being in the Bottom 3 two weeks in a row.

So it now appears that Colton Dixon will likely win American Idol Season 11. Can anyone else possibly gather up enough votes to beat him? With both Phillip and Jessica on a downward trend, and everyone else having been in the Bottom 3 at least once, I cannot see there being much competition.

Preliminary WhatNotToSing Ratings for American Idol Top 7

The American Idol rating site WhatNotToSing.com has some preliminary ratings for the solo performances from last night's show, and the scores are all pretty close, from a high of 80 for Jessica Sanchez to a low of 41 for Phillip Phillips (I am ignoring the duet and trio ratings.) Except for Phillip, everyone ended up between 60 and 80 which is a pretty tight grouping.

In fact, except for Skylar (who had the highest rating last week), every one else saw an increase from their rating last week, even Hollie and Phillip who have now been the bottom two ratings for the last two weeks (even removing DeAndre from last week.) Over the past 6 weeks we can also calculate the mean rating scores for the Top 7:

1) Jessica: 76.0
2) Skylar: 68.8
3) Joshua: 66.0
4) Elise: 65.0
5) Colton: 64.2
6) Hollie: 58.3
7) Phillip: 56.5

So if we remove Jessica on the top and Hollie and Phillip at the bottom, the other 4 contestants are all extremely close together with mean ratings of 64.2 to 68.8. The competition is getting tight!

American Idol Top 7 Predictions - Who Will Join Hollie in the Bottom 3?

Well, it is pretty obvious that the producers at American Idol want Hollie Cavanagh to be in the Bottom 3 tomorrow, and they do not want Elise Testone to be there with her. Why does Elise get to sing last on the performance show 2 out of the last 3 shows? That does not seem very fair. Of the Top 7, all of them have been able to perform last on a performance show now except for Jessica Sanchez and Joshua Ledet. Why not let one of them perform last this week, just because they are less likely to need the votes? Nonetheless, looking at the elimination poll at Idol Chatter, Elise is still considered the second most likely to go home tomorrow night, although she is actually tied with Phillip, which is a first time for him. If you check the DialIdol numbers, I no longer consider their raw numbers very accurate since they had Elise and Hollie at the top of the raw vote scoring for the Top 8 last week and they ended up being in the Bottom 3:

But if you look at the actual DialIdol scores from last week they were more accurate:

So maybe we should look at this week's current DialIdol scores as of right now:

They have Elise in dead last place in the DialIdol score, but with Colton and then Jessica next (which seems less likely.) Has the person performing in the lucky "pimp spot" ever been sent home? It is definitely getting more difficult to predict who will be in the Bottom 3, but it looks like along with Hollie, they may well be Elise and maybe even Phillip. Could Jessica actually be in the Bottom 3? I personally cannot imagine it, but you never know.

'Clear As Day' Breaks a Million Scanned Sales, 'Stronger' Nears Three Quarters of a Million

It was another good week for American Idol sales winners, as once again it is Scotty and Kelly leading all Idols in sales. Scotty McCreery's 'Clear As Day' has now officially scanned a million sales with 20K in sales this week, putting his total at 1.016M. Yes, that is a big M there now in front of his sales number! Kelly Clarkson's 'Stronger' actually outsold 'Clear As Day' this week with 33K in sales to push her total to 731K and put her at #12 on the BillBoard chart (where is Scotty's BillBoard ranking?) Scotty's sales this week actually improved from last week (up 20%) and it is his best sales week since the week after Christmas.

Chris Daughtry also had a good sales boost this week with 7K more 'Break the Spell' albums sold to bring his total to 423K (#69 on BillBoard). Casey James, however, saw his sales fall to 4K more units this week (25K total) but he still stays in the Top 200 at #129. Lauren Alaina's 'Wildflower' also remains in the BillBoard Top 200 at #194 with 3K in sales (269K total.) I noticed even Mandisa's 'What If We Were Real' had a big jump to get back on the chart this week (3K in sales, #179 on the chart with 164K total sales.) Kelly Pickler's latest '100 Proof' had a nice gain after her performance on Idol last week, with 2K more in sales to bring her total to 66K. It was pretty much a good week for everybody!

American Idol Betting Odds Continue to Change with Pinnacle Odds

 

The Pinnacle Sports betting odds tend to be more precise than the Bovada odds so I was glad to see their odds for the Final 7 of American Idol. Like the Bovada odds, Jessica Sanchez is now the odds on favorite (at 2.70:1 versus 2.0:1 at Bovada), but they still have Phillip Phillips as the number 2 favorite at 2.73:1. If you average his two odds (2.5:1 on Bovada and 2.73:1 on Pinnacle = 2.615:1 average) Phillip's are still lower than Colton Dixon's (2.25:1 on Bovada and 4.12:1 on Pinnacle = 3.185:1 average).

If we take the same data points and plot them together as a line plot with a logarithmic scale over time we can compare the trend in betting odds as they have changed over the past month. Phillip and Jessica have been battling it out to be the odds on favorite, and it appears Jessica is currently winning. Colton Dixon has had the most consistent improvement in odds and now he is closing in on Phillip and Jessica to be the favorite. The most overall consistent contestant not in the Top 2 has been Joshua Ledet whose odds have stayed between 5:1 and 20:1 for the whole month and who is the official "middle of the pack" pick. Skylar Laine is now tracking closely behind Joshua's odds now after being one of the Top 3 favorites in early March. The two most in trouble are the other two who were with DeAndre in the Bottom 3 last week, Elise Testone and Hollie Cavanagh. Elise had come back strong with a couple strong weeks, but now she looks like one of the two might likely to leave the competition. Hollie's odds had been improving in the middle of March but now her odds of winning are fading faster than Elise's. She is the Pinnacle long shot now with odds of winning of 46:1. Without Heejun and DeAndre around, she will likely be the one leaving next if she cannot pick up a lot of new votes.