Survivor auctions were a big part of the show for years, but the producers went away from it for a while.
Well, it’s time to bring back the auctions and maybe even add a twist that could make it more interesting.
For new Survivor fans, here is a quick breakdown of how the auctions worked for the castaways.
Midway through the season, host Jeff Probst would give each of the castaways some money and reveal that it was time for an auction.
This was typically a point in the season when food had been scarce, leading to Jeff auctioning off platters to the highest bidder.
Sometimes, the food items would be kept a secret, and other times Jeff would just reveal that it was things like a large pizza or a plate of milk and cookies.
It was up to each castaway how much money they were willing to spend, and there was always the fear that something better might come along at the end of the auction.
Bring back the Survivor auctions
Jeff revealed that one of the reasons that Survivor stopped doing the auctions was that people were saving their money to possibly buy an advantage. Those advantages can be extremely important to someone on the outs with their tribe.
No matter how the castaways viewed the auctions, though, most Survivor fans enjoyed watching it take place. This broke up the regular episodes and presented something which was a lot of fun to watch. Getting rid of it was a mistake.
Below is a video of the auction that took place on Survivor: Cagayan.
Introduce a twist or two to the Survivor auctions
If the problem that Jeff has with the auctions is really that people won’t stop saving their money for an advantage, then shake things up a bit.
One twist would be to have an auction with no advantages, and Jeff could simply tell everyone that before the auction takes place. That would lead to some increased bidding on food items.
Another twist that could be interesting is to have the advantage early in the auction. Get it out of the way so that someone expends their funds on it, but that everyone else can then settle into bidding on food. Someone sharing their food with the person who got the advantage could then become a strategy.
To really create a lot of chaos, how about an auction with just advantages? Don’t provide any other way to gain advantages outside of the auction on a particular season, where clues could send people searching around the islands.
At the end of the day, bringing back the Survivor auctions would be very enjoyable to the viewers at home, no matter how they are done.
More Survivor news
It was revealed that Bruce Perreault gets to return to Survivor after he had to be medically evacuated during the Survivor 44 premiere.
And in a very fun podcast from Jeff Probst, he shared that a Survivor castaway threw away an advantage (accidentally) on a recent season of the show.
Survivor 44 airs Wednesdays at 8/7c on CBS.
I think it would be better to just hide an advantage in one of the plates of food and Jeff tell them that there is an advantage somewhere, but they’d have to bid to find it.