Market Watch: SPOTY and Rashford

The Headlines. 

On 23rd of October the world woke up to headlines such as:

'He does not give up': how Marcus Rashford became a hero to school kids

 and 

Despite Tories rejection, Marcus Rashford Twitter timeline shows mammoth success in bid to feed children

But also headlines like this:

SPOTY 2020 odds: Marcus Rashford favourite to win BBC Sports Personality of the Year after free school meals campaign

The Reaction.

The price for SPOTY as the previous headline suggests was slashed.  There is a problem with the bookie odds though.  They wont be taking huge bets on a market like this, also they welcome action only from recreational punters.  These restrictions means that they are restricting the amount of information they are taking and need to generate the most accurate odds.

So lets turn to the exchanges - and we also see a similar contraction in his price.  All the way down to 1.6 (highlighed below).

But this seems at odds with the previously stated criteria published by the BBC themselves.  These are the terms and conditions from last year (and previous years).  They still could choose different criteria as they dont seem to have published rules for this year yet.

This is also at odds with history where they have passed on sports personalities before who were better known for their charity work outside of sport rather than any specific achievement. In particular they ignored Jermaine Defoe in 2017 despite his publicised support that year for Bradely Lewery a young fan who was suffering.

And finally it is at odds with the footballers most recently nominated.  Sure Raheem Sterling had bravely come out in support of racial inequality and that may have been part of his nomination appeal, but he also won the Domestic Treble and the Soccer Writers Player of the Year.  For Rashford "Joint 8th top goalscorer, finishing 3rd in the League.  On the international front scored a penalty in Matchday 3 to propel England to joint top of their Nations League group" - doesn't fit in.. Maybe Jordan Henderson's sporting achievements would belong in the below list (captained Liverpool to their first title since the 80's, writers player of the year 2020).

2019 Raheem Sterling

Helped Manchester City win the domestic treble of Premier League, FA Cup and League Cup titles. Also named as Football Writers' Association Footballer of the Year.

2018 Harry Kane

Served as England captain in the FIFA World Cup, where he led the squad to a fourth-place finish and scored 6 goals (including a hat trick against Panama) to win the Golden Boot.

2017 Harry Kane

Became the Premier League's top scorer for a second consecutive season and as England captain helped secure qualification for the FIFA World Cup.

2016 Jamie Vardy

Helped Leicester City win the Premier League title, having been given odds of 5,000/1 to do so at the beginning of the season.

2016 Gareth Bale

Won the Champions League (for a second time) with Real Madrid and was part of the Wales team that reached the semi-finals of Euro 2016.

On Sunday, gambling industry insiders were fully aware of the lack of sporting achievement problem.

And even a few days earlier than that savvy punters had identified the angle.

On betfair and smarkets his price contracted with the news, it seemed a real win for a popular sports personality that transcended sport altogether.  Shown below is the smarkets history of those few days. However in light of all that was known at the time why were they allowed to stay so low?  Should the "Wisdom of the Crowd" not have corrected them?  It was only when the Daily Mail rehashed all this already known information and published an article to the wider community that we saw a small correction in the exchange odds - as he drifted back out to 3.7 (last matched on betfair at time of writing), and 4.2 on smarkets. 

What went wrong.

This is interesting to me, because what if the exchange is wrong? What if it is inefficient on a large market where €400K was matched on the total market and €200K was matched on Rashford himself. What does this say for other markets, for example the much debated accuracy of the President of the US markets?

I usually refers back to Joseph Buchdahl's article on Wisdom of the Crowds. He lists 4 conditions for Wisdom of the Crowd to work - diversity, independence, decentralisation and aggregation.  Wisdom of the Crowd is what usually cause betfair exchange market to converge on the true probability. In cases like this where the crowd is led by the media and the headlines, this idea of diversity of thought and independence can possibly break down.

Or am I missing something else. Was there actually new information in the Daily Mail article if you read between the lines?  Phrases like "Daily Mail understands.." and "BBC bosses are aware.." could imply that they have an inside line to the Panel but do not want to quote them directly. If confirmation of the rules were coming from the Panel directly then that would indeed be new information and just cause for the odds to move again.

There is also information outside this to consider.  Hamilton becoming the all time record holder of grand prix wins on Sunday 25th and also Tao winning the Giro d'Italia in cycling the same day.  But these events didnt move Rashford's odds in any significant way until the publication of the Daily Mail story.