Golden Balls

This article is about the British game show. Golden Balls is also an informal nickname for English footballer David Beckham and an alternative name for the movie Huevos de oro.

Golden Balls
Created by	Endemol UK
Directed by	Julian Smith
Presented by	Jasper Carrott
Starring	Amanda Grant
Country of origin	United Kingdom
No. of series	8
No. of episodes	288
Production
Producer	Endemol
Production location	BBC Television Centre
Running time	60 mins (including adverts)
Original release
Network	ITV (ITV1/STV/UTV)
Release	18 June 2007 (2007-06-18) – 18 December 2009 (2009-12-18)
Related
Deal or No Deal Divided Odd One In

Golden Balls is a British daytime game show on the ITV Network, presented by Jasper Carrott. It was filmed at the BBC Television Centre. From 25 February 2008 to 13 February 2009, the show was sponsored by ITV Bingo (powered by Party Gaming) (STV Bingo in Scotland); and from 2 November to 18 December 2009 the show was sponsored by Carpet Right. Golden Balls Ltd licensed their name to Endemol for the game show and merchandise.

Gameplay

Round 1

At the back of the studio is the "Golden Bank", a giant contraption like a lottery machine. Inside it, are 100 golden balls, containing cash values, ranging from £10 to £75,000 (in the unaired pilot, the highest valued ball was £200,000 and £100,000 was also present). Twelve of these balls are randomly drawn from the machine and four "Killer" balls are added by Amanda Grant, the "Balls Assistant". These sixteen balls are split equally and randomly among four contestants, who place two balls on their front row and two on their back row. The balls on the front row are visible to all contestants, with the balls on the back row being secret to their owner.

The contestants in turn announce the contents of the balls on their back row. They can either tell the truth or lie about them. After each contestant has done this, they discuss who they think is lying and try to establish who has the worst set of balls, either in terms of having the lowest amount of money or the most Killer balls.

The contestants then secretly vote for which of them they would like to leave the game. In the case of a tie, the contestants must try to reach a consensus in open discussion. If this does not occur, who is eliminated is decided at random. This is decided by giving each contestant involved in the tie another golden ball, one being a Killer ball and the others empty. The contestant who had the Killer ball is eliminated. At the end of the round, each contestant reveals the contents of the balls on their back row and the eliminated contestant's balls are "binned", namely they are out of the game for good.

Round 2

The three remaining contestants' balls are put back into the ball machine, along with two more cash balls chosen at random from the Golden Bank, as well as one more Killer ball, leaving fifteen balls in play. These fifteen balls are split among the remaining three contestants randomly and equally, with two balls on their front row and three on their back row.

As with Round 1, the contestants reveal the contents of the balls on their front row and must announce what is in the balls on their back row, again, able to lie. The contestants then discuss the veracity of the others' claims and vote another player off in the same fashion as in Round 1.

Bin or Win

The two remaining contestants' balls are again put back into the ball machine and one more Killer ball is added, leaving eleven balls in play. The two contestants sit at a desk with the eleven balls between them. In turn, starting with the contestant who brought the most money into the final, the contestants pick a ball to "bin" (eliminate from the game) and pick a ball to "win" (add to the jackpot). If a Killer ball is picked to be won, then the accumulative value of the jackpot is divided by 10. For example, if the jackpot stands at £10,000 and a Killer ball is chosen to go into the Golden Five, the jackpot is reduced to £1,000. This process is repeated five times.

Split or Steal

After five balls have been won, the contestants have to choose one last decision to make over the final jackpot total. They are each presented with two final golden balls. One has "Split" printed inside it and the other has "Steal" printed inside it.

• If both contestants choose the Split ball, the jackpot is split equally between them.
• If one contestant chooses the Split ball and the other chooses the Steal ball, the Stealer gets all the money and the Splitter leaves empty-handed.
• If both contestants choose the Steal ball, they both leave empty-handed.

The table below shows how much of the jackpot is gained by each contestant with the different combinations of choices:

Result	Split		Steal
Split	50%	50%	100%	0%
Steal	0%	100%	0%	0%

This is similar to the prisoner's dilemma, a well-studied problem in game theory. A key difference is that the players can communicate – in the theoretical prisoner's dilemma the prisoners cannot communicate, in Golden Balls the players sit face to face. The dilemma is that the Nash equilibrium for the prisoner's dilemma – that is the stable, rational solution – is that both players should defect, but this results in a much worse outcome than if both of the contestants were to cooperate. The "Split or Steal" game element was also used on Shafted, a previous Endemol production, and in the U.S. game show network game Friend or Foe?.

Popularity

The first show opened with 1.6 million viewers and continued to climb to a steady 2 million viewers. In the same 17:00 timeslot, eight of the first eleven episodes beat Channel 4's Richard & Judy and The Weakest Link on BBC Two also took a dent from the show's success. Series 2 went on to average 2.1 million viewers in early 2008. As of Summer 2009, the show's popularity fell and attracted around 1.2m which lead to the show's demise on 18 December 2009.

Scientific research

Golden Balls has attracted attention from social scientists as a natural experiment on cooperation. A team of economists has analyzed the decisions of the final contestants and found, among others, the following (http://ssrn.com/abstract=1592456):

• 1. Individual players on average choose "split" (or "cooperate") 53 percent of the time.
• 2. Contestants' propensity to cooperate is surprisingly high for amounts that would normally be considered consequential but look tiny in their current context, what the authors label a “big peanuts” phenomenon.
• 3. Contestants are less likely to cooperate if their opponent has tried to vote them off the show in the first two rounds of the game, which is in line with the notion that people have an intrinsic preference for reciprocity.
• 4. There is little evidence that contestants’ propensity to cooperate depends positively on the likelihood that their opponent will cooperate (i.e., they find little evidence for conditional cooperation).
• 5. Young males are less cooperative than young females, but this gender effect reverses for older contestants since men become increasingly more cooperative as their age increases.

Transmission guide

Series	Episodes	Filmed Between	Played Between	Details
1	40	March 2007 - April 2007	18 June 2007 - 10 August 2007	40 episodes were commissioned.
2	58	18 September 2007 - 16 November 2007	2 January 2008 - 21 March 2008	60 episodes were commissioned.
3	51	11 March 2008 - 2 May 2008	21 April 2008 - 4 July 2008	The 2 hold-over episodes from series 2 plus 49 from series 3.
4	35	27 August 2008 - 17 September 2008	27 October 2008 - 12 December 2008
5	30	27 October 2008 - 12 December 2008	5 January 2009 - 13 February 2009
6	15	16 February 2009 - 24 April 2009	27 April 2009 - 15 May 2009
7	24	16 February 2009 - 24 April 2009	27 July 2009 - 4 September 2009	No episode on 31 August due to Bank Holiday Monday.
8	35	16 February 2009 - 24 April 2009	2 November 2009 - 18 December 2009	The last ever series.

Viewer's competition

For series 3, a viewer's game was introduced. Four golden balls appear on the screen at the first two commercial breaks. One contains £3,000, the other three are Killer balls. They are shuffled and you have to find the cash ball.

From series 4 until the end of its run, there were multiple formats for the viewer's competition, including the one used in series 3. In addition, the prize per day ranged from £2,000 to £4,000.

Records

• The biggest amount won in the first series was £61,060 on 6 August 2007 when contestant Helen stole all the cash from her opponent Sam, having taken through a £164,500 potential jackpot.

• The highest potential jackpot was £168,100 on 11 February 2008, as two of the eleven balls contained the top two amounts (£70,000 and £75,000). The actual jackpot, £93,250, was stolen by contestant Klara.

• The lowest potential jackpot so far was £5,000 on 29 May 2008, astonishingly low considering only two of the eleven balls were Killer balls. The eventual jackpot was £768, which was stolen by both contestants, hence not given away at all.

• The largest jackpot was featured in the second series on 14 March 2008 (on Jasper Carrott's 63rd birthday). The accumulated jackpot was £100,150 and the entire jackpot was stolen by contestant Sarah, making her the biggest winner on the show. All four contestants in the game (Chloe, Stephen, Sarah and Darren) were returning contestants from previous games who all split where their opponent stole.

• The largest split/split win was £43,950 (from a jackpot of £87,900) on 21 March 2008, the last episode of the second series.

• The largest jackpot ever to be wasted due to a steal/steal outcome was £92,330 on 5 November 2008. This is also the third highest jackpot ever, but as both contestants, Mark and Martin, stole, they each left with nothing.

• The smallest non-zero win was £1.83, won by both contestants, Adam and Chris, on 2 February 2009, as they both split the jackpot of £3.65.

• The lowest overall jackpot was £2.85 (stolen by Hannah on 14 May 2009). This narrowly beat the previous lowest jackpot, which stood at £3.

• Only on one occasion has the final jackpot equaled the potential jackpot at the start of Bin or Win. This was achieved on 9 July 2007 when the top five balls, which added up to make a £50,500 jackpot, were selected to Win. The chances of achieving the maximum potential jackpot from the final eleven balls available are 1 in 462. Contestant Michael stole the entire jackpot from his opponent Clare, making him the second highest winner of the first series.

Notable contestants

• Contestant Scott, a financial advisor from Middlesex, became the first notable contestant for correctly predicting the outcome of the game. His five golden balls in the second round were £60, £175, £300 (on the back row) and two Killer balls on the front row. During the discussion, he told his opponents, Fred and LeAnne, to vote him off because all his balls were rubbish, and insisted they both split in the final round. Fred and LeAnne, after voting Scott off, ended up both choosing the "split" ball, and thus split their jackpot of £11,950, prompting host Jasper to say, "Do you know who's got the biggest smile? Scott! Scott has got the biggest smile! He was right!"

Merchandise

Video Game

Main article: Golden Balls (video game)

The Video Game has been released on the Nintendo DS and Wii platforms.

The Mobile Game

In 2007, Gameloft released Golden Balls, The Mobile Game.

The DVD Game

An interactive DVD game has been released.

The Board Game and Card Game

A board game has been released. A card game was also released by the same company as the board game. This was available exclusively to Amazon, but has since been discontinued.

External links

• Golden Balls at itv.com
• Golden Balls at IMDb
• Golden Balls Official Endemol UK Site
• Scientific paper on Golden Balls at SSRN.com
• Golden Balls at crashthatch.com
• Golden Balls Mobile Game Official Gameloft UK Site
• "Golden Balls Game Online" - Review of where to play Golden Balls Online