t’s seven days until the Emmy nominations for 2016 are announced, on July 14th, 2016. And after last year’s surprising massive sweep of the awards show by Game of Thrones, oddsmakers are already running to give favorable numbers for the show pulling a two-fer for Season 6. According to Goldderby, which is the sort of place that does the polling and research that determines these numbers, “Seventeen out of 20 TV journalists polled are predicting it to win again, giving it leading 1/10 odds.”
That’s well north of the next contender which is Netflix’s House of Cards. Once upon a time, there was a sense where Emmy voters were more concerned with whose turn it was to win when it came to drama. (Unlike Comedy, where they simply vote the safe choice year after year.) So where the comedy Emmys were always the same winner, dramas most of the time moved in a round robin–usually rewarding whichever show was ending that year. (Breaking Bad is one of the few notable exceptions.)
But that logic was upended last year when the eligibility to become an Emmy voter was changed. (Partly, in order to shake this sort of thing up.) Instead of Mad Men sweeping purely by default that they were over and it was “their turn,” instead Game of Thrones walked off with everything. And considering how much more impressive Season 6 was–and how well timed HBO scheduled the finale, so that the show literally ended on the night before the voting period ended (voting for nominations closed June 27th, at 10pm,) so that it would be as fresh in voter’s minds as humanly possible, it’s no surprise that the show is being given such high odds to do it again.
The Emmys announcement will be streamed live next Thursday, and we’ll be bringing you the list of just how many categories Game of Thrones finds themselves nominated in this coming year. The award show itself will be held in the usual split format, with the Creative Arts Emmys on September 11th and the Primetime Emmys airing on ABC on September 18th.
