Last year, Swedish daily Dagens Nyheter investigated the Nobel odds.
http://www.dn.se/kultur-noje/det-bli...ka-vi-sla-vad/ Ngugi was the early favourite in 2013 as well. Why? Because of one single bet - by the journalist writing the article. The size of the bet? 200 kronor - less than £20.
Quote:
---Immediately after my bet Ladbrokes stops play, which is noticed by The Atlantic, who write a long speculative article - "Is it Ngugi wa Thiong'o's turn this year?" - based on Ladbrokes' press relations manager Alex Donohue saying they've received a large bet from a customer in Sweden.
(...)
"It's a snowball effect," Donohue explains on the phone from London, "when Ngugi wa Thiong'o is written about, more people bet on him and we we have to lower the odds to make even."
That Swedish customer...
"Yes," says Donohue.
That was me.
"Oh, it was you, was it. Terrific," he says dryly.---
The same journalist also visited another betting firm, Unibet (the ones who kept insisting Chinua Achebe was in with a shot up until mid-September 2013).
Quote:
---I ask him if I can place a bet on someone who's not on their lists - which Unibet's customer service had denied the day before - and he asks if I have a specific name in mind. Svetlana Alexievich, I say, and he writes it down.
Who do you want to see win?
"Bob Dylan would be fun. Or Paul Auster."
But he's not even on your lists.
"I'll have to add him when I add that Alexievich woman."
An hour after the interview, two names are added to Unibet's list: Svetlana Alexievich and Paul Auster, at 10 and 30 to 1, respectively. An hour later they're at 9 and 10. By Monday, when the Swedish Academy announce that the Prize will be announced the next Thursday, Alexievich is second on Unibet's list at 6 to 1 and is mentioned as a favourite in an article by Swedish news agency TT. At the same time, she shows up at Ladbrokes, at 51 to 1. By the evening, the odds have dropped to 12 at Ladbrokes and 5 at Unibet.---
From the same article:
- The master list used by Ladbrokes, and copied by everyone else, was put together in the mid-00s by a small group of employees interested in literature with the help of "some external experts" - ie they phoned up a few journalists and asked about their favourites. The same list is still used today, with a few modifications.
- "Significant" bets are anything over about £10, especially if they come from Sweden.
- Ladbrokes maintain this is a good way to make the discussions about the Nobel accessible to the general public. An unnamed source is more blunt: "It gives lazy journalists something to relate to, so they can have an opinion and use our research."