After nine months of barren Saturday nights, the nation’s favorite Strictly Come Dancing is finally back on TV. Believe it or not, the show didn’t always start out as popular in 2004 but it has quickly stolen our hearts. And in my humble opinion, the popularity of the show is mainly due to the internet and social media. Technology has obviously played a major part.

The technical revolution has seen a major boom in Television and the internet consumption, where people are able to engage with their favorite shows over and over, binge watch series, create memes and share everything on social media. Thanks to the television and the internet we can now stay in the comfort of our homes and watch happenings in other countries without having to be physically there. Making our favorite shows international, audiences are spreading even further than before, and we can engage, follow, like and share pictures, posts and statuses from our favorite celebrities. This also allows us to vote for our favorite stars on who we want to win, all from the click of a button, changing the Strictly Come Dancing game entirely.

Strictly’s popularity has increased since the increase in world wide technological usage, and it is safe to say that this is no coincidence. Strictly come dancing has become so popular that people can now actually place bets and start discussions on who will win shows, get voted out at which round and who is the most popular contestants.

This year’s favorite to win is CBBC presenter Karim Zeroual, and how have we reached this conclusion? In this detailed infographic, Betway have evaluated all the previous 22 contestants in order to determine what the best blueprint for success is.

Occupation

According to the infographic from Betway, one thing that is common amongst the majority of the previous winners of Strictly come dancing is that voters tend to vote for those celebrities know and love. Analyzing the last five winners, you’ll find that three of them have been presenters of one TV show to the other. These are Caroline Flack, Ore Oduba and Stacey Dooley.

Additionally, there have been about 40 soap actors who have taken part in Strictly Come Dancing and of that figure a whopping 80% of 32 contestants have ended up finishing at least amongst the top seven at the end of each series, while at least 16 of the 40 have finished amongst the top three. 

Popstars are also amongst the favorite, with 13 previous contestants known for being in the limelight. Of the 13 popstars who have contested strictly come dancing, Alesha Dixon, Harry Judd and Jay McGuiness are the three who have gone on to win it.

Age

Aside from occupation, age is another factor that Betway’s study have demonstrated are determinant in winning Strictly. This is not surprising of course, as a lot of physical strength and stamina is needed in ballroom dancing.  This is why it’s no surprise when the research found that those that have consistently won Strictly from the start, are in fact those who are in their 20-30s. A closer look at previous winners in fact shows that 31 out of 32 of the previous winners were between within this age bracket. Furthermore, the infographic shows that out of the of the 44 celebrities who were in their 20s, 18 of them have finished amongst the top half while seven of the 44 went on to win. Coming to an impressive 15.9%. Of those in the 50+ age range, only Debbie McGhee and Pamela Stephenson have reached top six.

Another thing we thing have influenced voters’ choice is the social media. Joe Sugg ( Joe has over 5.4m followers on twitter alone as of the time of writing this piece ). Social media influences virtually everything these days and strictly come dancing is not left out.

Here are the average scores for the best dancers for each series so far:

Series 1 – Natasha Kaplinsky 33

Series 2 – Jill Halfpenny 33.72

Series 3 – Zoe Ball 34.92

Series 4 – Emma Bunton 34

Series 5 – Alesha Dixon 36.5

Series 6 – Rachel Stevens 35.81

Series 7 – Ricky Whittle 34.18

Series 8 – Kara Tointon 35.69

Series 9 – Harry Judd 35.63

Series 10 – Denise van Outen 35.13

Series 11 – Natalie Gumede 36.87

Series 12 – Caroline Flack 35.13

Series 13 – Jay McGuiness/Kellie Bright 34.06

Series 14 – Danny Mac 36.63

Series 15 – Alexandra Burke 35.94

Series 16 – Ashley Roberts 36.94