About

Frequently Asked Questions

Didn’t this site use to be somewhere else?

Yes it did! Formerly homed at Dave Thorp’s Blog since 2012, in 2014 the Strictly Spoiler took off massively and has since been migrated to its own domain and its brand new home for 2015 and beyond.

How do you get the results so soon? The results show is live isn’t it?

No the results show isn’t live, it is pre recorded shortly after the main live show. The BBC goes to great lengths to try and maintain the illusion it is such as ensuring everyone refers to the previous show as being “last night” and even getting presenters to change clothes between shows. This is also the reason why voting lines only remain open for about 5 seconds each show. The only time the results are live is during the final. Not even the BBC are stupid enough to pre record that, although we probably shouldn’t give them ideas. This is the same corporation who brought us Don’t Scare The Hare who who knows what other crazy ideas they have!

Do you work for the BBC?

I’m not a BBC employee either presently or formerly and have no connection with the show (if I was I would have been fired a long time ago for breaching the official secrets act or whatever the BBC equivalent is). I’m just a Strictly fan who finds it ludicrous that in a day and age where information can be transmitted globally in the blink of an eye, that the BBC would still think it is a good idea to pre record the results show of their flagship reality TV show and broadcast it a whole day after the event.

If you don’t work for the BBC, how do you get the spoiler then?

I work closely with a number of other spoiler sources and together we source moles for the various shows who are willing to tell us the results

How did you keep providing spoilers during the 2020 series when there was no audience?

Strictlyspoiler.com was one of the few sources able to continue to provide a full spoiler experience during Lockdown 2.0 during the coronavirus pandemic. Many other sources turned to rumour and even worse Twitter.

An initial spoiler was always posted by me on a Saturday Night however this spoiler was based on polling and did not prove to be correct all the time though was a lot more accurate for those who looked at the bigger picture.

I was able to obtain confirmed results on Sunday mornings however and for a lot of people in the pandemic Sunday mornings became the new Saturday nights and the site tended to be a lot busier on Sunday instead. I cannot say too much about where I was obtaining the spoiler but the results were cast iron and most importantly they were complete containing a bottom two, who was eliminated and details of how the judges voted in the dance off.

Few, if any, sources provided as complete and reliable a spoiler experience as I did in the 2020 series and this was also repeated during the 2021 series when there was a reduced audience capacity

Why do you do this?

Originally this started out as a bit of fun and also a way for me to provide the spoiler to people on Twitter who follow me without the need to send multiple direct messages to avoid spoiling the result for people publicly. I never for one minute expected this site to become as popular as it has done!

As I said above I simply find it ludicrous that in a day and age where it is possible to transmit information globally in a fraction of a second that the BBC could possibly believe it to be a good idea to pre record the results show and broadcast it nearly a full day later. Some people will claim the BBC do it for ratings as the Sunday Night Results Show does draw in a large audience for its time slot. However as a public funded broadcaster who makes no extra money from shows with larger audience figures like commercial broadcasters do, ratings shouldn’t matter one bit to the BBC.

I’m aware that the BBC have to be seen to be providing value to license fee payers, as someone has pointed out in the comments, but the Strictly Come Dancing format is licensed by BBC Worldwide all over the world as Dancing With The Stars bringing significant revenue to the BBC. It would be very hard to claim for the format doesn’t bring value for license fee payers regardless of how many watch the results show and when it airs!

This site has adverts and other monetisation, surely you are doing this for the money?

Initially no this wasn’t being done for the money. For the first few years I did this traded at a loss and most of the revenue made from the various monetisation methods I have on the site was reinvested straight back into the site to pay for things like hosting costs which had spiralled from £3 a month to well over £1000 a month as well as marketing and competition prizes.

In 2017 my personal circumstances changed and as a result I now have to take an income out of any revenue I receive and this is now like a full time job to me. Just not as well paid, highly stressful at times and with highly seasonal income that is only received over the course of 3 months

When I first started doing this it was not my intention to build a commercially successful site. That happened by accident!

As far as the monetisation goes any revenue I make, where possible, is put back into the site and my competitions have gotten bigger and better each year with the largest prize I have ever given away paid out in 2021. I am registered self employed too and all earnings are appropriately declared to HMRC with Tax and National Insurance paid on them as appropriate and NI was also paid voluntarily by me many years even when I traded at a loss

Site donations go directly towards my web hosting costs which have sky rocketed as I’ve had to deploy increasingly complicated and costly hosting solutions in order to keep the site up due to the demands placed on it at peak times when the spoiler comes in

I’m interested in advertising on the site. How can I get in touch to do this?

At the moment advertising on this site occurs through the Google Adsense network mainly with some additional advertising from Jetpack Wordads. The site predominately has a female audience from the UK and most of its traffic comes on the weekends during the weeks leading up to Christmas when Strictly Come Dancing is on the air. Advertising on this site would be ideal for any advertiser wishing to boost their Christmas sales!

You can read more information about the audience demographic of this site, the amount of traffic it receives and how to get in touch with me with a proposal here. I would welcome proposals from anyone wishing to run a banner/text ad campaign on a CPM or CPC basis, anyone wishing to sponsor the site and/or its social networking channels or anyone wishing to provide prizes for the competitions I run in exchange for promotion.

I also have a significant following on Facebook and Twitter and can provide my services as a social media influencer.

There’s other sites that give the spoiler isn’t there?

Sites not so much these days. A couple of copycat sites did crop up in 2014, probably trying to ride my wave of success, but they gave up long ago and I own their domain names now anyway so now they redirect here

A couple of other websites have cropped up however they tend to only be able to provide a partial spoiler, often hiding that partial spoiler behind a clickbait button in a bid to boost their SEO. However their partial spoiler has fallen through these days. In the absence of their partial spoiler they have proven to be dependent on myself or other sources

There are other sources on some discussion forums and on social networking sites and these are the sources I work with to source moles each week so you guys always have the spoiler

Strictlyspoiler.com is the most viewed spoiler source online, routinely getting over 1,000,000 page views in 24 hours from over half a million individual users

There’s a user on Twitter posting the spoiler publicly to the #SCD #Strictly #StrictlyComeDancing #StrictlySpoiler and other hashtags. Is this you?

No it’s not. Despite them having a similar name to this site and, until 2015, copying and pasting copyrighted content from this site (complete with occasional typos such as when autocorrect corrected Sunetra to Saunter in 2014) to their twitter feed and passing it off as their own work the user concerned has absolutely nothing to do with me. If you check the posting times (most easily done on the #StrictlySpoiler hashtag) you’ll see that my spoiler post is tweeted long before (and on occasion in 2018 hours before) they post it to twitter each week (more so now they have to type it in their own words). Can’t think why that might be 😉

As for them posting the spoiler to the #SCD and other hashtags inadvertently spoiling the result for many people who don’t actually want to be spoiled, this annoys me as much as it does you. Especially since I’ve had a couple of people on Twitter think that it is me and give me grief for spoiling the results for them. All the sources I work with and myself go to significant lengths to try and avoid accidentally spoiling the result for people who don’t want to be spoiled and this user on Twitter is undermining that hard work by plastering the result all over the Strictly hashtags!

The only Twitter and Facebook feeds I currently post the spoiler to are linked at the top of this site and when I post it, although I use the Strictly hashtags as well, I post the spoiler in the form of a clearly labelled link to this site giving people the free choice whether to click on it or not.

Only 5% of Strictly’s Audience come here to view the spoiler. Whilst this small minority are entitled to learn the results in whatever way they see fit and when they see fit, there is no reason to spoil things for the other 98% who like to wait until the not live results (or simply aren’t aware of the existence of the spoiler). I fully understand that not every person who watches Strictly wants to see the spoiler and indeed an overwhelming majority of people wait until the not live results show. This user does not!

This user also gives nothing back to the spoiler community. I work closely with multiple sources and between us we usually have at least one mole in the audience. This user does nothing to source the spoiler other than visit this website and post the results to their twitter feed (usually far later than I’ve posted it) and has also completely failed to provide any spoilers in 2020 and 2021

Why do you tell people to complain to the BBC?

Originally this started out as something I would add to the posts to encourage anyone who had been spoiled by mistake by the spoiler posts (although as stated above I do try to minimise that happening) to complain about it to the BBC as it is the BBC who make the spoiler possible. Eventually it’s just become something of a catchphrase that I will add to most of my posts.

I don’t for one minute expect anyone has actually complained to the BBC nor do I expect that it would do the slightest bit of good if someone did complain to the BBC as their usual response to complaints, in my experience, is to stick two fingers into their ears and go “la la la la la we are not listening”

How have the BBC reacted to this site?

It has come to their attention and they aren’t too happy about the site or the social media channels I operate. They even had Facebook remove a page I was running during the 2015 series however this was later reinstated following a strongly worded email to them and a petition signed by many visitors to this site. Also when I received media attention for posting the 2016 Christmas Special Spoiler, a BBC spokesperson indicated in those articles that they weren’t happy about the results leaking out and they do try to prevent it.

I’ve also been informed anecdotally that me and/or the site are mentioned by the warm up guy prior to the recording of the show with audience members encouraged not to leak the results out.

I’m not sure why the BBC aren’t happy as I personally feel that if the BBC won’t give viewers what they want in the form of a live results then sites like this are a good compromise. I don’t spoil the result for anyone who doesn’t want to be spoiled and people have to actually actively seek the spoiler out or click a link off my social network feeds to see the spoiler. A good number of visitors still watch the results show despite knowing the result including myself so this site doesn’t take viewers away from the series (not that viewers should matter to the BBC). The results show has always done very well for viewers, especially given its time slot, and this site doesn’t have an effect on that. The number of people visiting this site over a weekend represents about 2% of the Strictly Come Dancing viewership during the 2019 series and many of the site’s visitors still watch the results show but prefer to go into it with advance knowlege of the results.

Also If the BBC don’t want the result to leak out there is something very simple they can do to stop it: broadcast the results live!

This site doesn’t really do anything different than news sites or other sites providing spoilers for TV series such as Game Of Thrones (which had major spoilers for the final few episodes) or the major soap operas for instance. People read spoilers for TV series all the time but that doesn’t affect how many people watch them nor does it affect the enjoyment of the series for people who have sought out and viewed spoilers.

Is this site really newsworthy?

I don’t think so but a number of newspapers (though in some cases I use that term loosely) seem to think posting stories about this site and what it does is newsworthy and on two occasions in 2017 one newspaper felt it merited front page news as there was absolutely nothing else important happening in the world at the time like Donald Trump and Kim Jong Un having a disagreement about whose nukes were bigger!

How a guy with a blog who posts information that is readily available elsewhere on the Internet if you know where to look could be considered to be newsworthy I don’t know? Because I have search engine ranking (albeit entirely accidentally at first) for relevant keywords for Strictly and the spoiler and my website and social media channels are usually the busiest source for the spoiler, I am considered the main source of the spoiler even though I’m not the only source, and most weeks I’m not even the primary source and for that reason the media seem to want to focus their attention on me.

Another reason why the media seem to want to give me attention is because I’m doing something that they would love to do. But they can’t do it because they would incur the wrath of the BBC and wouldn’t get invited to any cool BBC parties or press events any more

Why do the newspapers keep printing stories about the results leaking every single week during the 2021 series?

Well this is a perfect example of how lazy journalism has become these days. Not content with taking a story printed in a different newspaper, changing about 3 words and then reprinting it in their own newspaper, the newspapers are now taking a story they printed the previous weekend, changing 2 words of it and maybe the occasional picture (if they can be bothered) and then printing it again week on week ad nauseam

Seriously! Find some news to report on!

A cynical person would think they are just trying to get hits from my search ranking even though their articles contain no information of any use to people searching for the spoiler, and very little information of any use to anyone.

I am a journalist and wish to use content from your site in my article

Whilst newspapers and other media are exempt from the copyright act and may use copyrighted content from other sources for the purposes of news reporting the copyright act requires them to provide a sufficient acknowledgment of the original source of the copyrighted content.

In order to be able to use copyrighted content from this site your acknowledgement must include:

1. My name: Dave Thorp (please note the correct spelling)
2. The name of this website: The Strictly Spoiler
3. A link to this website in the event of an online article or the url for this website in the event of an offline article

Should I discover that copyrighted content from this site is used without a sufficient acknowledgement as detailed above an invoice will be raised at my standard rates (£1000 per use of copyrighted content per channel (online/offline))

Should a journalist wish to seek a comment from me about any story they are considering or wish me to do an interview I can be contacted through Facebook or Twitter on the above links

This policy has been in effect since 12th November 2018 and does not cover historic articles published prior to this date

Why don’t your polls add up to 100%

They should do now. This was a quirk of the poll software and me allowing 3 votes per users but has now been patched. Part of me actually preferred the old way as it reported percentage of users voting for an option rather than percentage of votes received but I don’t have a way to change it back. I’ve experimented with different polling software too but any time I’ve replaced the current software its caused more problems than it has solved, especially when the site is placed under load

Who are you anyway?

This site designed and maintained by Dave Thorp. Dave Thorp is a blogger, photographer, photography graduate, software engineering student and father living just outside of Preston in Lancashire.