After 10 weeks of competition, controversial scores and eliminations, and a string of perfect dances to close out the contest, season 20 of “Dancing With the Stars” came to a close Tuesday night. But who won: actress/singer Rumer Willis, musician Riker Lynch or military vet Noah Galloway? And did YOU predict the results?
See our users’ exclusive predictions of the ‘Dancing with the Stars’ finale
It was also a momentous occasion for Willis’s pro partner Val Chmerkovskiy, who won the title for the first time on his third trip to the finals. America had made him wait just like they made his brother wait: fellow pro Maksim Chmerkovskiy had been with the show even longer before finally winning in season 18 with Meryl Davis.
Lynch ended up as the season’s runner-up, which is where 55% of users expected him to place. Poor Galloway wound up in third place, as 76% of our users anticipated. In fact, 10 weeks after we goofed in the season premiere, missing every single result, Gold Derby got its act together and perfectly forecast the season finale, collectively getting all five questions right. See our users’ complete odds for the finale.
In our “DWTS” predictions center, we’ve been asking users like YOU to predict the ultimate winner all season long. Hundreds of users cast their votes, but one finished with the top score for the season and eternal bragging rights: Radzie.
Radzie answered every question this season and tops our overall Season 20 leaderboard with 59% prediction accuracy. If eligible, as per our contest rules, he will win a $100 Amazon gift certificate.
He never had the top prediction score in any of our weekly contests, but thanks to his consistency throughout the competition, Radzie was our overall best “DWTS” predictor for almost the entire season. In fact, until the season finale, he was the only user with an overall score better than 50%.
In the end, Radzie went five-for-five predicting the finale, extending his lead against his rivals. He finished 9% better than our next five users, who tied with 50% accuracy for the season: Eeric, Ryan Lapierre, Ngo Khang, Nate and Paul Andrew Stebbins.
We have a second $100 winner to announce as well, as Denton Davidson did the best at scoring the season-20 finale. See episode leaderboard.
Davidson moved up slightly on our overall leaderboard, finishing seventh for the season with 47% accuracy, but don’t feel too bad for him. He won our weekly “DWTS” contest for the last two weeks in a row, making him one of only two users to accomplish that feat. You might remember that he also won our contest predicting “American Idol” this season. Never underestimate Davidson when betting on reality TV.
But since Gold Derby collectively predicted 100% of results in the finale, that meant Davidson had a lot of company at the top of the leaderboard. A whopping 38 users had perfect scores for the week, which means his victory came down to savvy betting. He picked up 2,930 total game points, 600-points ahead of second-place user Dehlavi.
Davidson bet 500 points on Galloway’s low score Monday night, and 200 points each on Lynch’s second-place finish and Galloway’s third-place finish. All those contestants had even odds when he locked in those bets, so he made those 900 points right back. He placed 100 points on Willis’s high score Monday night at 23/10 odds, earning him another 230 points.
But the lion’s share of his points came from predicting Willis would win the mirror ball trophy. Our users scored 200 points for each consecutive week they predicted the champ, and Davidson had been predicting Willis since week two, before most of our other users jumped ship from gymnast Nastia Liukin. That yielded 1,800 points when the winner was announced.
“Dancing with the Stars” may be over, but we are forecasting everything from the results of TV shows like “Game of Thrones” and “Survivor” to the winners of the Emmys and Tonys.
Average Gold Derby users just like YOU often turn out to be our smartest prognosticators, so it’s important that you give us your predictions. You can change them later as often as you like.
Get started by making your prediction as to which castaway will win “Survivor” using our easy drag-and-drop menu below. And be sure to sound off on the current season of “Dancing with the Stars” in Gold Derby’s reality TV forum.
