| Golden Balls | |
|---|---|
| Format | Game Show |
| Created by | Endemol UK |
| Directed by | Julian Smith |
| Presented by | Jasper Carrott |
| Starring | Amanda Grant |
| Country of origin | United Kingdom |
| No. of series | 6 |
| No. of episodes | 288 |
| Production | |
| Producer(s) | Endemol |
| Location(s) | BBC Television Centre |
| Running time | 60mins (inc. adverts) |
| Broadcast | |
| Original channel | ITV (ITV1/STV/UTV) |
| Picture format | 16:9 |
| Original run | 18 June 2007 – 18 December 2009 |
| Chronology | |
| Related shows | Deal or No Deal Divided Odd One In |
Golden Balls was 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.
Contents |
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).[1] 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.
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.
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.
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.
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?.
The first show opened with 1.6 million viewers and continued to climb to a steady 2 million viewers.[1] 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.[2]
Golden Balls has attracted attention from social scientists as a natural experiment on cooperation. A team of economists (including Richard Thaler) has analyzed the decisions of the final contestants and found, among others, the following (http://ssrn.com/abstract=1592456):
British psychologist Adrian Raine has criticised the show, arguing that it "encourages deceitfulness", and that many of its contestants are celebrated for displaying "characteristics of psychopathy".[3]
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.
The Video Game has been released on the Nintendo DS and Wii platforms.
In 2007, Gameloft released Golden Balls, The Mobile Game.
An interactive DVD game has been released.[4]
A board game has been released.[5] 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.[6]
| Series | Start date | End date | Episodes | Recorded | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 18 June 2007 | 10 August 2007 | 40 | March 2007 - April 2007 | |
| 2 | 2 January 2008 | 21 March 2008 | 58 | 18 September 2007 - 16 November 2007 | 60 episodes were commissioned. |
| 3 | 21 April 2008 | 4 July 2008 | 51 | 11 March 2008 - 2 May 2008 | The 2 hold-over episodes from series 2 plus 49 from series 3. |
| 4 | 27 October 2008 | 12 December 2008 | 35 | 27 August 2008 - 17 September 2008 | |
| 5 | 5 January 2009 | 13 February 2009 | 30 | 27 October 2008 - 12 December 2008 | |
| 6 | 27 April 2009 | 18 December 2009 | 74 | 16 February 2009 - 24 April 2009 | Series 6 took breaks from 18 May - 24 July, 31 August and 7 September - 30 October. |