The strange and lucrative world of celebrity death pools
[A woman leaves flowers beneath a mural of David Bowie in Brixton on January 11, 2016 in London, England. British music and fashion icon David Bowie died in early 2016 at the age of 69 after a battle with cancer. (Carl Court/Getty Images)]
CNN calls 2016“The Year of Celebrity Death” and while most people mourned the deaths and celebrated the lives of Arnold Palmer, Prince, Garry Shandling, David Bowie and more, some people are actually cashing in on them.
Proving the maxim that you can literally find anything on the internet, celebrity death pools have some people cheering every time a celebrity dies. For those of you still putting your eyeballs back in your head, these are websites like Stiffs.com, The Ghoul Pool and TheDeadpool.com where you can pick celebrities you think will bite it over the next year and when they do, you can sometimes win money (and always win bragging rights) as long as you have the most dead celebrities on your list by the end of the year.
As you can imagine, 2016 has been a banner year for those trying to move up in the ranks on the death pool, not unlike another year not too long ago.
“Remember the year Patrick Swayze, Michael Jackson, Billy Mays and Ed Kennedy died? Yeah? That year was 2009. That year was massive for celebrity death,” says Jobi, who prefers to remain semi-anonymous as the creator and manager of Doug Stanhope’s Celebrity Death Pool where he is known on the boards as “Reaper.”
It was the sheer volume of celebrity deaths in 2009 that caused Jobi to want to do a celebrity death pool, but that wasn’t the only thing.
“I’ve had a front row seat to a lot of tragic and bloody deaths, mostly loved ones and a few random strangers, so I’ve become a little fascinated by death (and numb to it at the same time),” he told Yahoo Canada Finance in an email exchange.
“Although I’m generally pessimistic when it comes to humanity (especially when it’s noticed that people only post kind thoughts about someone after they have died, not during their life), death usually brings everyone a little closer. At least until the pain and feeling loss fades away, then they go back to being pricks again. Personally, I find the different cultural aspects of death riveting. How people cope with personal loss, celebrity loss, even local or national loss on a certain scale.”
It wasn’t until 2011 that Jobi actually started a backyard version of the celebrity death pool with his buddies. But after two years of trying to maintain an Excel spreadsheet, keep track of the points and cope with the growing number of people that wanted to play, a website seemed like the next logical step. Good thing he had the perfect way to make it popular.
A Fame Game
Jobi inserted himself into the life of comedian Doug Stanhope in 2005, when the former The Man Show host moved to Bisbee, Ariz.
I messaged him on Myspace…and he invited me to his New Year’s party. The rest was all downhill, or uphill — sometimes both in the same day —from there,” says Jobi.
So in 2011, when Jobi was doing that backyard celebrity death pool with his buddies, one of them was Doug Stanhope and he was really, really into the game. That’s when Jobi realized the best way to ensure that a lot of people participated in his celebrity death pool, when he transferred it to a website in 2013, was to put Stanhope’s name on it.
[Comedian Doug Stanhope performs onstage at Sinking Ship on September 13, 2012 in Indianapolis, Indiana. Stanhope isn’t actually the one running Doug Stanhope’s Celebrity Death Pool. (Photo by Joey Foley/Getty Images)]
“The only way it would be remotely popular would be to use Stanhope’s name. Since he was so into it, and no one would give a f*** about ‘Jobi’s Celebrity Death Pool’, using his name made sense. I pitched the idea to him and his manager over drinks. They loved the idea, so we moved forward,” he recalls.
“I only got in as a goof since I don’t really follow pop culture. And then as the ball dropped on New Years’ Eve and we all revealed our 20 picks for the year, I became immediately hooked. Every day that year I found myself going to Wiki Deaths 2011 before even checking my email. Summer hadn’t even come before I was making notes for next year…By the start of the 2012 pool, I had been sitting at the computer like some racetrack handicapper for months and all but kept my picks locked in a briefcase to my wrist,” Stanhope wrote on his blog in 2012.
Stanhope’s endorsement obviously worked. The site has about 1,200-1,500 users at last count, Doug Stanhope’s Celebrity Death Pool is the top result when you search ‘Celebrity Death Pool’ online, Jobi appears every once in a while on Stanhope’s popular podcast to promote it and the t-shirts sell like hotcakes.
Of course there’s still room for improvement; Jobi’s a big fantasy baseball fan and would like to provide players with more “stats” on their famous picks. The kind of variables that would perhaps make them more likely to be included or excluded as picks likely to bite it. He’d also like to fund the site entirely through advertising.
The Deep End of the Death Pool
As it turns out, celebrity death pools have infinite depth in their styles and variations. But the dominant forms of gameplay are split between the set-it-and-forget-it style of Stiffs.com – the oldest celebrity death pool on the Internet – and the fantasy sports style of Doug Stanhope’s Celebrity Death Pool.
Riffs on the Stiffs.com variation are more common. This is where players pick a list of ten celebrities they think will die over the next year and for every celebrity on their list that does, they earn points (the younger the celebrity, generally the more points you earn) and the player with the most points at the end of the pool wins the pool.
As for prizes, money is controversial when it comes to celebrity death pools. In the U.S. (where most of these sites are based) online gambling is illegal. Stiffs.com once funded cash prizes for their pools from the $10 fee players submitted for each list they created (although, a third list could be obtained for free when you bought two) but eventually their lawyers advised against it. Now they offer physical prizes such as a 60-inch HDTV, a Las Vegas vacation package and a MacBook Air for the top finishers.
Jobi confirms that Doug Stanhope’s Celebrity Death Pool is in a similar boat.
“For an operation this small, the hoops we’d have to jump through and the legal sh*t storm we’d have to avoid [to award cash] would not be worth the pain,” he says. “If you and your friends gamble privately, well, that’s alright with us.”
Money still factors in however, because those who want to start a new league or “Funeral Home” on Doug Stanhope’s Celebrity Death Pool must pay the site for the privilege. The bigger the Funeral Home, the more these “Funeral Directors” pay, but they do get some Doug Stanhope merchandise as a thank you. For players who just want to join a Funeral Home and pick celebrities, there is no cost.
As far as the point structure on Doug Stanhope’s Celebrity Death Pool, older celebs give you fewer points, younger give you more. If you are the only person in your Funeral Home that has picked a celeb that dies, you get solo hit points (25 points), and if in the whole website, that’s a site-wide solo (50 points). Oh, and don’t forget the bonus points: overdose, (“The Amy Winehouse” – 25 points) murder, (“The John Lennon” – 50 points) dying on their birthday (“The Machine Gun Kelly” – 50 points) and more.
“Sure, some people can see it as morbid and disrespectful,” says Jobi, who doesn’t think the bonuses are in bad taste. “There’s nothing wrong with that; however, I’ve seen friends that find it morbid at the beginning and then totally warm up to the idea and play. People find the UFC bloody and morbid, but some of them can’t take their eyes off of it. Morbid curiosity is a powerful thing.”
A Strategy Anyone Would Kill For
Speaking of strategy, what are the best ways to ensure the most celebs on your list take a dirt nap the year you pick them? (Murder will get you disqualified – we checked.)
Pay attention to the news. Do homework. We have a lot of ‘fringe’ celebs in the database, so pay attention to the obscure ones as well,” says Jobi.
Fringe celebs aren’t just the ones on the C-list and D-list, they could be famous only in certain countries. A member of parliament or a little-known television personality from another part of the world could help secure some of the big point bonuses, especially with players in 22 countries. Not everyone is happy with which celebrities make Jobi’s database, however.
A chunk of players constantly b*tch about certain additions to the database, but again, they are only concerned with what they think is a celeb. They really have no idea how difficult it is for one person to make those kind of calls. I definitely f*** up occasionally by adding or denying a celeb that should or shouldn’t make the cut, but I think I’m getting better at reining in the criteria,” says Jobi.
Plus, savvy players can take advantage of such a wide net, by getting more points and bonuses than the majority of their rivals. All they have to do is pay attention. Some sites like Stiffs.com lock you in to a list of celebrities for the entire year with one alternate, while others like Doug Stanhope Celebrity Death Pool allow trades, so you can swap out certain celebrities for others.
For the most part, Jobi says, people use the site as it was intended: to have fun and not take the world too seriously. The best time to start playing is January 15 and despite what the site says, they will be open for the 2017 season (they just haven’t updated it).
“Our site motto is ‘Everyone Dies. Let’s At Least Have Fun With It.’ I’d like to think we’re ahead of the curve when it comes to dealing with death,” says Jobi.
They certainly are. Doug Stanhope’s Celebrity Death Pool has been growing steadily since launch, but there’s one thing Jobi secretly prays for every day that would put them over the edge.
“I’m hoping a celeb gets pissed that they’re on our site and b*tches about it. That would be great publicity,” says Jobi.
But so far, the celebs that know they’re on the list are taking it in stride.
“I have maybe three celebrity friends, and they would pick themselves if they could, but that’s against our rules,” says Stanhope. “Check the f***ing rules, go to the site and sign up for next year. It’s always wicked fun. You can play your shitty fantasy football all fall and winter, but death pool goes all year round.”