- The Academy of Country Music (ACM) Awards have been held every year since 1966.
- The ACM Awards will be held at the MGM Grand Garden Arena in Las Vegas.
- The ACM Awards will be broadcast live on CBS on Sunday, April 7, 2019 at 8 PM Eastern.
The Academy of Country Music Awards was first held in 1966 becoming the first major awards show recognizing the genre. The show decided on a hat motif for the award in 1968. That design became iconic and it has been used ever since.
The ACM Awards is one of the most popular award shows among the general public and they’ve always gone out of their way to accommodate the fans. In 2003, the awards moved from Los Angeles to the Mandalay Bay Events Center in Las Vegas. It would stay at the Mandalay Bay until 2006 when it moved across the street to the MGM Grand Garden Arena where it would stay until 2014. In 2015, the show was held at AT&T Stadium in Dallas–in the process they broke the record for ‘Most Attended Awards Show’ with a crowd of 70,252. The show returned to the MGM Grand Garden Arena for 2016, moved to the new T-Mobile Arena for 2017 but headed back down the road and across the street to the MGM in 2018.
THE VOTING PROCESS HAS ALSO CHANGED OVER THE YEARS
The venue for the ACM Awards isn’t the only thing that has seen changes over the years. The voting process for the show has been modified as well. In 2008, the ACM wanted to increase the engagement of the consumer base so they decided to get the fans involved with the voting for several categories including ‘Entertainer of the Year’. From the outset, there were problems–after winning the first fan vote for ‘Entertainer of the Year’ Kenny Chesney criticized the new voting format:
The program was controversial from the start. Kenny Chesney, after winning the first fan vote for entertainer in 2008, criticized the process backstage, complaining that instead of acknowledging artists’ hard work, the vote had devolved into a marketing contest that rewarded people for “seeing how hard you can push people’s buttons on the Internet.”
There were other problems–it created some internal squabbles between major country music acts with some accusing others of ‘gaming the process’:
The biggest of the rules in fan voting was that an artist was not to give anything away in exchange for a vote — no free downloads or concert tickets, for example. A board member, speaking on background, said some artists were engaging in negative promotion, putting down their opponents to build up their own case.
“At the end of the day, that’s just something the Academy can’t be behind,” says (ACM CEO Bob) Romeo. “It’s a no-win for the Academy to be put in a position that would [set up] acts to bicker to each other.”
There were other problems–cyber ‘ballot box stuffing’ and the increasing cost for record companies of creating and managing ‘campaigns’ for ‘Artist of the Year’ among them. Record labels started to balk when campaign costs rose well into the six figures. Some artists also expressed concern that the relentless ‘calls to action’ on social media were serving to alienate their fanbase.
The sum total of all of this–in 2016 the voting process was returned to the membership of the Academy of Country Music who are instructed to follow specific criteria and protocol in picking the winners. The hope is to eventually involve the fanbase in the process once again but as it worked out it had too much downside for everyone involved.
Reba McEntire will host the show for the 16th time. The Academy of Country Music Awards will be broadcast live on CBS on Sunday, April 7, 2019 at 8 PM Eastern. Here are the official SPORTS INSIDER betting odds for the ACM Awards:
54TH ACADEMY OF COUNTRY MUSIC AWARDS BETTING ODDS
ENTERTAINER OF THE YEAR
Jason Aldean +200
Chris Stapleton +250
Luke Bryan +350
Keith Urban +500
Kenny Chesney +500
MALE ARTIST OF THE YEAR
Chris Stapleton +200
Keith Urban +250
Thomas Rhett +350
Luke Combs +500
Dierks Bentley +500
FEMALE ARTIST OF THE YEAR
Miranda Lambert +225
Kacey Musgraves +275
Carrie Underwood +300
Ashley McBryde +450
Maren Morris +450
DUO OF THE YEAR
Florida Georgia Line +200
Dan and Shay +225
Brothers Osborne +300
LoCash +600
Maddie and Tae +600
GROUP OF THE YEAR
Lady Antebellum +200
Old Dominion +250
Little Big Town +300
LANCO +600
Midland +600
ALBUM OF THE YEAR
From A Room Vol. 2/Chris Stapleton +200
Golden Hour/Kacey Musgraves +300
The Mountain/Dierks Bentley +300
Desperate Man/Eric Church +500
Dan and Shay/Dan and Shay +500
SINGLE OF THE YEAR
Meant to Be/Bebe Rexha w/ Florida Georgia Line +225
Tequilla/Dan and Shay +300
Most People Are Good/Luke Bryan +350
Down to the Honky Tonk/Jake Owen +350
Heaven/Kane Brown +600
SONG OF THE YEAR
Space Cowboy/Kacey Musgraves +250
Broken Halos/Chris Stapleton +300
Tequilla/Dan and Shay +450
Meant to Be/Bebe Rexha w/ Florida Georgia Line +450
Break Up in the End/Cole Swindell +600
Yours/Russell Dickerson +600
VIDEO OF THE YEAR
Babe/Sugarland w/ Taylor Swift +225
Shoot Me Straight/Brothers Osborne +350
Burning Man/Dierks Bentley w/ Bros. Osborne +350
Tequilla/Dan and Shay +600
Drunk Girl/Chris Janson +600
Burn Out/Midland +600
MUSICAL EVENT OF THE YEAR
Burning Man/Dierks Bentley w/ Bros. Osborne +200
Meant to Be/Bebe Rexha w/ Florida Georgia Line +250
Drowns the Whiskey/Jason Aldean w/ M. Lambert +350
Everythings Gonna Be Alright/Murphy/K. Chesney +500
Keeping Score/Dan and Shay w/ Kelly Clarkson +500
