Comedy Central’s “Inside Amy Schumer” is expected to prevail in the first-ever Emmy race for Best Variety Sketch Series. Our exclusive Gold Derby odds have the series heavily favored to win with leading odds of 3/10. It picked up seven nominations this year, including Best Comedy Actress (Amy Schumer), which will be announced on the primetime telecast on September 20. But Variety Sketch Series will be handed out at Creative Arts on Sept. 12, so Schumer, who is also a producer, may already be an Emmy winner by the main event.
Related: Watch our editor Emmy slugfests predicting all four guest acting races
Best Variety Sketch Series and Best Variety Talk Series were created by the TV academy this year from the previous combined category Best Variety Series. In years past, talk shows dominated that contest, with the last 17 victories going to just three programs: “Late Show with David Letterman” (1998-2002), “Daily Show with Jon Stewart” (2003-2012) and “Colbert Report” (2013-2014).
“Inside Amy Schumer” faces off against the only sketch comedy to have been nominated in the combined category in recent years: NBC’s stalwart “Saturday Night Live,” which celebrated its 40th anniversary this year. It has eight nominations (and seven more bids for its 40th anniversary special) and ranks second in our predictions with 11/2 odds.
Next up with 20/1 odds is another Comedy Central series, “Key and Peele,” which had a breakthrough year with six nominations, including a surprise Comedy Supporting Actor bid for Keegan-Michael Key.
IFC’s “Portlandia” is nominated just twice this year, for this award and for Best Production Design (Non-Narrative). It ranks fourth with 50/1 odds, while Comedy Central’s “Drunk History” is nominated only once and gets 100/1 odds to prevail.
Keegan-Michael Key on ‘Key & Peele’ Emmy windfall, ending the show
Will “Inside Amy Schumer” win Best Variety Sketch Series? Make your own Emmys picks now to the right or at the bottom of this post, and you could win one of our three prizes ($500, $300 and $200 Amazon gift certificates) as well as a place of honor on our leaderboard and a starring role in next year’s Top 24 Users (the two dozen folks who do the best predicting this year’s Emmys line-up).
Last year, our Experts had an accuracy rate of 58.62% when it came to predicting the Emmy winners. That score tied them with both Gold Derby’s Editors and the Top 24 Users (those two dozen folks who did the best at predicting last year’s Emmys). Our Users scored 51.72% (Click on any of these groups to see what they got right and wrong last year.)
Which group will be victorious this year? Meet the guy who won our contest to predict the Emmys last year — and learn how he did it and how you can be our next Gold Derby superstar.
As some of our Users turn out to be our smartest prognosticators, it’s important that you give us your predictions. Your picks influence our Users racetrack odds, which also factor into our official combined odds.
Photo: Amy Schumer, Method Man. Credit: Comedy Central/Everett Collection/REX
