Who Votes on the Grabbys, Anyway?

With the big ceremony just a few hours away, I thought I’d start my coverage by answering a question that comes up each year during Grabby Awards Seaason: Who chooses who gets these trophies anyway?

The Grabby Awards have been given out since 1991, and since 1999, Chi Chi LaRue has been flying out to host them. The Sword started covering them in 2009. Around 2011, following the dissolution of the GayVN Awards (which are rumored pretty much every year to be getting revived), the Grabbys took over as the big self-congratulation ceremony of the year for the industry, the Oscars of Gay Porn, after two decades of being more of a scrappy, hometown affair. Now all the studios show up with their contingents, and there are big sponsors, etc.

And everyone who wins feels super honored.

But no one is ever really clear on how the nomination process works (the nominee list is always really long, with 12 or 16 nominees in every category, just so no one feels bad), or how the final winners are voted on.

The Sword went to organizer Stacy Bridges, publisher of Chicago’s GRAB magazine, for answers.

We have 6 judges/writers that send their nominations to Mark [Nagel] who compiles the list and then sends the nominees back to the judges to vote on the winner. There are also 2 porn fans that aren’t writers who cast their votes.

So you got that? It’s an anonymous panel of 8 people, two of whom are fans. And they all definitely watched all 800 nominees. Just like the real Oscars.

3 thoughts on “Who Votes on the Grabbys, Anyway?”

  1. What WHAT WHAT, QUEER ME NOW, the Best Gay Blog? Are they kidding me how can a PRO Straight, gay for pay and Next Door Studio’s pet blogsite won the GAY Award? Wow there a lot of traitors in our community. So sad so sad.

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