Did you know it’s over ten years since a Sportsperson made the Strictly Final? Ahead of Quarter-Finals week, we look at which group of celebrities have the most success on the show. 2023 is an excellent year for actors so far but will they take the top spot overall in terms of achieving success? Let’s find out…

Success criteria: As we wanted to look at which celebrity backgrounds do well on Strictly – not just those who win – we have used the following 3 criteria as our measures of success:

• • Reaching the Quarter-Final
  • Reaching the Semi-Final
  • Reaching the Final
    (Winners will also be considered within the ‘Finalists’ group as a separate group)

Data: 279 celebrities participated during Series 1-20, another 15 have been taking part in Series 21. Analysis of success in reaching the Quarter-Finals will be the only data here that includes the Class of 2023 celebrities as this is the only measure of success we can currently include for this group. This means for SF, Final and Winner analysis there will be 279 celebrities included, but for QF success there will be 294. Mostly percentage values have been rounded to the nearest whole number for ease of reading; however for some charts and graphs, figures have been calculated to one decimal place.

How background has been categorised: Wikipedia’s Strictly Come Dancing contestant pages have been used to identify celebrity backgrounds and where a contestant has more than one domain listed, they have been classified by a primary professional domain. Examples include: John Whaite – listed as a baker and TV presenter – who is included in the group ‘TV Chefs and Bakers’ and Kym Marsh – listed as actor, singer and presenter – who is included in the group ‘Actors’.

Overall Breakdown of Celebrity Backgrounds

Nine professional groups have been identified for the 294 contestants – including a miscellaneous category of ‘Other’ celebrities whose professional background meant they did not fit easily into the other categories.

Where 4 or more celebrities shared a profession, a separate group was created (e.g. TV Cooks and Bakers; Models; Politicians). For smaller groups and individuals the ‘Other’ category was used and this group includes: 2 reality TV show stars, 2 social media personalities, 2 businesswomen, 1 magician, 1 magician’s assistant, 1 astrologer, 1 criminal barrister, 1 fashion designer, 1 lawyer and 1 psychologist.

Clearly actors (86), broadcasters and presenters (77) and sportspeople (49) are the three largest contestant groups and because groups vary in size, in order for comparisons to be fair, we need to identify what percentage of each celebrity group achieves success rather than simply comparing numbers.

Quarter-Finalists (Series 1-21)

110 of the 294 celebrities (37%) who have taken part have reached this milestone. It’s a diverse group with actors, presenters, comedians, sportspeople that also includes a criminal barrister (Judge Rinder) and a Conservative politician (Ann Widdecombe, yes she really was a Quarter-Finalist!). The data shows:

• Musicians and singers excel: 57% (20/35) of this group reach the QFs and it is the only group where over half of contestants achieve this
• Actors are the second most successful at getting to this stage (48% or 41/86)
• The ‘Other backgrounds‘ group takes third place (46% or 6/13) and includes a wide range of celebrities such as Mark Wright, Jamie Laing (both Reality TV stars), Joe Sugg (Social Media personality) and Debbie McGee (Magician’s assistant)
• Groups with very small numbers of celebrities such as Models (8) and Politicians (4) should be treated with care; 25% of Politicians reaching the QF is actually only 1 contestant, compared to 27% of Broadcasters and Presenters which is 21 contestants

Semi-Finalists (Series 1-20)

85 of the 279 celebrities (31%) have been Semi-Finalists in Series 1 – 20. The numbers and percentages of celebrities from each group reaching the penultimate stage of the competition are shown in the table below.

What does the data show?

• Musicians and singers are top again; 51% (18/35) reaching the SFs (again more than half!)
• Celebrities from ‘Other backgrounds‘ are the second most successful (38% or 5/13), closely followed by Actors (35% or 28/80)
• Surprising to us is the lower success rate of Sportspeople; 19% (9/47) of this group make it to the Semis (the only lower group is the slightly anomalous ‘Models’ group which has only 8 members)

Finalists (Series 1-20)

64 of the 279 celebrities (23%) have been Finalists in Series 1 – 20 but which celebrity group does the best at getting all the way to the Final? The chart below shows both the numbers and the percentages of each group reaching each of the last 4 stages:

• Quarter-Finals (purple)
• Semi-Finals (light blue)
• Finals (lilac)
• Winners (gold)

The numbers on each bar are how many contestants reached that stage before elimination or the end of the competition – so for the total Finalists for each group we need to combine Finalists who did not win (lilac) and Winners (gold).

What did we find?

• 40% (14/35) of Musicians and Singers taking part get to the Final, a higher success rate than any other celebrity group; 14 Broadcasters and Presenters also make the Final but this is from a much larger group of 72 (so equates to a lower 19%)
• 3 Musicians and Singers have won – Alesha Dixon (2007), Harry Judd (2011) and Jay McGuiness (2015). These 3 winners equate to a percentage win rate of 9%, the second highest after the anomalous Model group where 1 winner (Abbey Clancy, 2013) from 8 contestants equates to 13%
• No other group achieves the same levels of success in the 3 measures we have used
• Celebrities from miscellaneous ‘Other backgrounds’ have the next highest success rate in reaching the Final; 38% (5/13) achieve this but it has not yet translated into any wins
• It seems that while a more unusual or unique professional background can be equated with some success on the show, a lower public profile or less exposure for celebs in this group may ultimately mean it’s harder for them to win
• Actors have more success (26% or 21/80) than either Broadcasters and Presenters or Sportspeople in reaching the Final, but are slightly behind Broadcasters in terms of their percentage of Winners (7.5% versus 8.3%)
• 13% (6/47) of Sportspeople have made the Final – a lower success rate than the 3 other main groups which surprised us
• Sporting celebrities had greater success in earlier years; Series 2, 3 and 4 all saw sporting Finalists and in Series 3 and 4 the Winners and Runners-up were all Sportspeople (Darren Gough and Colin Jackson, then Mark Ramprakash and Matt Dawson)

Final Thoughts

Overall, Musicians and Singers are the most successful celebrity group to participate in Strictly Come Dancing in terms of reaching the later stages of the competition; 57% (20/35) of these contestants make the Quarter-finals and 40% make it to the Final – the highest of all nine groups. Why a musician or singer on average tends to do better than an actor or a sportsperson is hard to call but perhaps its connected to their musicality and professional expertise, which may include some level of dance training as well as extensive live performance experience both of which will be invaluable in the Strictly ballroom.

With no professional musicians or singers in the current Series, and four actors reaching the Quarter-Finals, there is a strong possibility that this year will see the ‘Actors’ group notch up another win. This would make them the most successful group at winning in terms of outright champions (7) but would still see them trailing behind Musicians and Singers in terms of their percentage of winners because they are a much larger group to start with (Musicians & Singers: 9%, Actors: 8%)

Sporting celebrities appear to be having rather less success on the show in recent years than in the early days and we were interested to discover it is now over ten years since a sporting celebrity appeared in a Final; this was when Series 10 was won by Louis Smith and Flavia back in 2012. It would be great to see a contestant from this background in a Final again one day soon – can Annabel maybe go all the way?