Smarkets Blog

Being an small team can really pay off sometimes. I blogged about the Alastair Campbell thing a while back, and in a similar vein, the current media interest in the Andy Coulson/Phone hacking story made an interesting diversion this week from working on the Euro Qualifiers and upcoming horse racing markets.

When the media is heavily covering a story (and as long as it doesn’t violate our editorial guidelines), creating a market around an issue can be a really interesting way to track the mood of the betting public.

The story was whether Andy Coulson would resign from his position in the Conservative Party after the New York Times published an article into whether he was complicit in phone hacking. We opened the market and immediately the momentum was behind ‘yes’. Bloggers blogged and Twitterers tweeted and within an hour it has swung strongly towards ‘no’. Now the market is more settled and it’s gently bobbing around 15% no / 88% yes.

This example is exactly what we love to do at Smarkets; put up markets that captures the public attention and watch as rival opinions and media coverage moves the market in different directions. Whether Coulson will leave or not is up to him, but it’ll be interesting to see whether the ‘wisdom of crowds’ was proved correct.