2025 DCI Prediction Contest: How the DCI Community Sees the Season Unfolding
I put together a new prediction contest for the 2025 DCI season - here's the data that shares how 120 DCI fans think the season will shake out
After a long wait, the 2025 DCI season is finally here and in full swing!
The season kicked off a week and a half ago and really picked up speed this past weekend. Despite a rained out event in Whitewater, WI on Saturday, 12 events have taken place to date across the southeast, northeast, midwest and west coast. A shorter and revamped tour this year means that some corps are still within the first week of competing, but the season has still started out strong.
In my previous two pieces, I shared what we might expect this season based on historical trends from season to season, as well as predictions generated by a machine learning model based on historic score data. But as I’ll reiterate once again, even all this data analysis can’t capture the unquantifiable key ingredients that will ultimately determine results this year. It is true that past results have a high correlation with where corps will finish, but in a sense, a new season means a clean slate - both the title and all 12 finalist spots are up for grabs.
That said, I thought it would be interesting to collect data on the community’s subjective opinions about results for the upcoming season by hosting a prediction contest. In a way, the data behind these predictions could perhaps be influenced by some of that unquantifiable, current season data - opinions based on publicly available (and perhaps privately, too) information such as show concepts, staff changes, and corps member talent. At the very least, I thought it’d be interesting to use this data to be able to compare subjective predictions with those powered by a machine learning model and were more objectively created (at least with data) and see what was more accurate by the end of the season.
(Apologies if this is the first you’re hearing about this contest - I announced this on a post on the r/drumcorps subreddit and on my Instagram story, but I could have done more to publicize it).
With the prediction contest closed and a total of 120 entries submitted, let’s take a look at the aggregated data and see what it says about the overall thoughts and expectations the community has about the 2025 season.
The Meta Data & Rankings
The prediction contest allowed entrants to submit the corps by placement that they believe will finish in the top 15 spots at World Championships in August, as well as winners of the five caption awards. Every corps was eligible to be picked, including groups in Open and International Class. As you would expect, a wide variety of corps and placement pairings were submitted - in fact, of the 120 submissions, only two users had exactly identical corps/placement pairings (even that feat is a bit impressive, to be honest).
A total of 23 different corps were picked at least once. 16 of those 23 corps - all in World Class - were submitted in more than 50 entries. The remaining seven corps were a healthy mix of all classes - three in World Class, three in Open Class, and one in International Class.
The table below shows meta data for the top 16 corps that received at least 50 votes, sorted by each corps average placement. The ‘Count’ column represents how many entries included that particular corps and the ‘Freq’ column represents the corps’ most commonly picked placement. The ‘Finalist’ column represents the percentage of submissions that picked a given corps to finish in a top 12 placement:
We’ll chat about some specific corps and placement groupings in a minute, but it’s likely that these initial rankings aren’t too surprising. With a few minor exceptions, the rankings roughly follow how corps finished at the end of the 2024 season.
The second table below is a frequency matrix of how many times a corps was picked for a particular placement. I thought this would also be interesting to show as it gives a better picture of how the votes were distributed and the general expected range of placements for each corps:
Again nothing too surprising here. Hopefully the added color scale helps give some context as to vote distribution. I especially found it interesting how the color scale further identified how voters categorized certain competitive tiers.
Where the Rankings Lie
When aggregating this data, one of the first things that stood out to me is how undecided the community is about which corps is going to be crowned champion by the end of the season. Depending on how the corps are ranked by the prediction data, there’s a different consensus champion. For example, Blue Devils had the lowest average placement, but the most second place votes and third most votes for first place. Boston Crusaders had the most first place votes but second lowest average placement. Bluecoats - who come into the season as the undefeated defending champions and could be considered the favorites to win in 2025 - had the third lowest average and most votes for third place, but also had the second most votes for first place. The average rankings for the three corps were separated by a mere 0.05, further proving how close they were in voting.
After the top three, the next four corps in the top half were rather solidly agreed upon. Carolina Crown, Phantom Regiment, Santa Clara Vanguard, and Mandarins all got the most votes respectively for fourth, fifth, sixth, and seventh places. With 66 votes in seventh place - over half of the submissions - Mandarins got the most votes of any corps/placement pairing, suggesting the belief that the corps will be on a competitive “island” this season. All four of these corps do have an argument that they are ready to make the jump to the next echelon and challenge for a medalist spot, so it is possible one or more of them will exceed expectations this summer.
The remaining eight placements are quite scattered with no clear consensus as to where anyone will finish. Only four corps got 30 or more votes for any particular placement - Blue Stars in both eighth and ninth, Troopers in ninth, Colts in tenth, and Pacific Crest in twelfth. The Cavaliers will be an interesting story to watch in this grouping this season - a total of 52 voters placed them in ninth or tenth and their average placement of 9.5 indicates a belief that they will rebound from their eleventh place finish from last year. However, they also had the widest range of placements of any corps with three voters believing they could finish as high as sixth and one voter placing them as low as fifteenth.
In another recent piece, I shared a fact that it’s been quite common in recent seasons for finals to feature at least one corps who wasn’t a finalist in the prior season. Despite that, the aggregated data gave the nod to Madison Scouts to repeat last year’s 12th place finish. Of the corps that finished 12th and lower last year, Scouts had the best average placement (12.2) and the highest percentage of votes in a finalist placement (47.06%). However, not far behind were Pacific Crest with an average placement of 12.83 and 41.18% of votes in a finalist placement. As mentioned earlier, Pacific Crest also had the most votes for 12th place, with 44, showing that many think the SoCal corps will finally achieve their first ever finalist appearance this year.
Where the Captions Lie
Surprisingly, unlike the placements, there was much more agreement for caption awards. The table below shows the number of votes each corps received for the five awards:
Two things stood out to me here: the first is how much agreement there was in every award. Each leading vote getter received at least 50 votes, or slightly less than half of the voters. The award for Best Color Guard was especially a runaway, with Boston Crusaders being voted by 75% of voters. General Effect, Visual, and Percussion were the only awards in which the second place corps got more than 30 votes.
The second thing that stood out is that no corps was in first in more than one caption. If five different corps were to win an award, it would be only the second time ever for this occurrence, the first happening back in 2019. This parity in caption award winners further proves how there doesn’t seem to be a consensus first place corps in the early part of the season.
Closing Thoughts
Even though we’re still early in the season, signs are already pointing to another competitive season and one that might defy the aggregated predictions laid out above. Sunday night’s show in Stanford ended in a close spread up top with only a point separating Boston Crusaders and Blue Devils, with Santa Clara Vanguard not far behind Blue Devils by 0.8. Meanwhile in the midwest, Blue Stars and Colts have been within a point of each other in both of their head-to-head matchups, while Madison Scouts were within a point of Troopers at La Crosse. Pacific Crest is the only World Corps that hasn’t performed competitively, though that will change when they debut tomorrow night in Santa Clarita, CA.
By the end of the week, we’ll have a full set of rankings that will determine the schedule for the big showdown in San Antonio, TX. By the end of the next week - only 10 days from now - that big showdown will finally be here for what has become the biggest regular season show on the DCI calendar. It will once again be the only time that all 20 World Class corps will compete under the same roof with the same panel of judges, so it will give us the best indicator for rankings as we enter the second half of the season.
With such a short season, most of my content this summer will focus on periodic updates to the standings for the prediction contest and the b(AI)ndScores prediction model. Keep an eye out for those updates as we enter the heart of the season over the next two weeks!