Novelty Betting: TIME Person of the Year

Sportsbook.com is one of the leading online sportsbooks in the world and it is offering odds on a great tradition in America: Who will be the "TIME Person of the Year"?

TIME magazine has been around for longer than Man or so it seems! Since 1927, when Charles Lindbergh flew across the Atlantic and secured the inaugural TIME Person of the Year accolade, it has become a major talking point, often a controversial one, to speculate on who will get the vote. It is revealed in a Christmas Day edition of TIME thus cranking up the flow of anticipatory juices of the population even more!

The idea it seems is to highlight and profile the man, woman, couple, group, idea, place, or machine that has most influenced events in the preceding year, either positively or negatively. So, in the past, holders have included the likes of Adolf Hitler, Josef Stalin and Ayatollah Khomeini as well as more "friendly" subjects like John F Kennedy, Winston Churchill, Mahatma Gandhi and Queen Elizabeth II, plus a long list of American Presidents.

It isn't intended to be a populist vote although many argue it often is, especially since an almighty backlash against the magazine occurred after the 1979 choice of the Ayatollah Khomeini. TIME then had to justify why they chose the safer bet of Rudolph Guiliani in 2001 over the arguably more "influential" Osama Bin Laden!

Collective groups have also secured the front cover of this edition, such as "The Whistle Blowers" in 2002 (a reference to the respective women who bravely revealed the rotten cores of the Enron and Worldcom corporations and the FBI), "Middle Americans" in 1969, "Hungarian Freedom Fighter" in 1956 and "American Fighting Man" in 1950. In 1982, the front cover went simply to "The Computer" while in 1988 this went to Earth as "(Endangered) Planet of the Year"!

The current holder(s) of the title is also split three ways - Microsoft Corporation's Bill Gates, his wife Melinda, and U2 lead singer, Bono, shared the spoils for their philanthropy during the year made them "The Good Samaritans".

Sportsbook.com has a betting market up and running on what the cover will contain on the 2006 edition. Current betting looks like this, with Google's head honcho and brains, Eric Schmidt leading the odds marginally ahead of environmentalist, Al Gore. UK Prime Minister Tony Blair is also in the running. There are also many perceived "enemies" of the States lining up behind:

Eric Schmidt (Google) 9/2
Al Gore 5/1
Steve Jobs (Apple, iPod, iTunes) 7/1
Global Warming/Mother Earth 7/1
Tony Blair 8/1
George W. Bush 10/1
Kim Jong-Il (North Korea) 10/1
Sheikh Hasan Nasrallah (Hamas) 10/1
Dick Cheney 12/1
Madonna 14/1
Condoleezza Rice 14/1
Tony Snow (White House Press Secretary) 14/1
The American Soldier 15/1
Hilary Clinton 15/1
The Iraqi People 16/1
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (Iran) 20/1
Angelina Jolie 20/1
The Islamic Insurgents 20/1
Ken Lay and Jeffrey Skilling (jailed ex-Enron) 25/1
Darfur Refugees 25/1
Mel Gibson 25/1
Tom Cruise 28/1
John T. Schiller 35/1
Abu Musab al-Zarqawi (Al-Qaeda) 35/1
Moqtada Sadr (Iraq) 40/1
Ismail Haniyah (Palestine) 40-1
Bill Frist (Online Gambling Law) 100/1

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