SPOTY

[smashedagain]

Is anyone more informed than me about organised betting on markets such as SPOTY? Or does anyone have any idea what the BBC might do to counteract competition manipulation?

they effectively disqualified the fishing dude when he won the vote

yeah..bob nudd and alan scotthorne both been in a position to win spoty as the angling times ran campaigns for votes . they promised to run a 5 minute feature on match fishing and that seemed to appease the  fishing fraternity

[AndrewT]

One of the reasons for AP winning by so much last year was that there was a big campaign within racing to get people to vote for him, which has quite a bit of clout when you consider that racing gets a pretty solid 1m people watching it on terrestrial TV every Saturday.

[smashedagain]

One of the reasons for AP winning by so much last year was that there was a big campaign within racing to get people to vote for him, which has quite a bit of clout when you consider that racing gets a pretty solid 1m people watching it on terrestrial TV every Saturday.

yeah angling was and probably still is the biggest sport in terms of participating numbers. There's nowt as queer as folk, as the voting Xfactor public goes to show.

[Sighmuns]

Yeah, i remember reading about that, they discarded all ballots cast (oi oi) on forms printed by the Angling Times in the end.

I guess that if they were stupid enough to place 1000 votes from the same line (stop it) then votes would be easy to discard, but as there is approaching half a million matched in the Betfair market already, with millions to follow on the night, I would imagine anyone trying to fix the vote would be a bit more shrewd than that.

[Sighmuns]

One of the reasons for AP winning by so much last year was that there was a big campaign within racing to get people to vote for him, which has quite a bit of clout when you consider that racing gets a pretty solid 1m people watching it on terrestrial TV every Saturday.

A good point; I guess there will be similar campaigns amongst Cycling fans for Cavendish, but that certainly wouldn't explain his huge drop in price. People are backing him at any available price, which suggests to me that they, at least, consider him a sure thing. Rushes like this have definately been wrong before... fairly sure Adlington traded in the 1.6's in 2007, so if he CAN be beaten there has to be value in laying Cav at 1.5... On merit alone Cavendish should be one of the favourites, but if I was sure that there will be no funny business with the betting involved I would lay for a large amount.

[AndrewT]

There was a similar push in darts for Phil Taylor, and the actual numbers of votes cast in SPOTY is not that many, so odds on favs can get turned over pretty easily.

However, for all we know there's a big pro-Cav campaign in some cycling magazine or website.

[thetank]

It's a disgrace that Tim Tebow isn't on the list.

(been busy, sorry Andrew)

[Sighmuns]

Cavendish is 1.44/1.45 now...

[redarmi]

I am not going to be in the UK for SPOTY this year so i will pass on the best route to profits.  Get on Betfair and every time they feature a prominent candidate wait for his price to drop and then lay it.  Then back it back for a profit10-15 minutes later.  I have never lost on the event doing this.

[gatso]

didn't realise this was tonight. no surprises I see

[AndrewT]

didn't realise this was tonight. no surprises I see

Cav pissed it - amazed to see Andy Murray in the top half.

Mark Cavendish 169,152 (49.47%)
Darren Clarke 42,188 (12.34%)
Mo Farah 29,780 (8.71%)
Luke Donald 23,854 (6.98%)
Andy Murray 18,754 (5.48%)
Andrew Strauss 17,994 (5.26%)
Alastair Cook 13,038 (3.81%)
Rory McIlroy 11,915 (3.48%)
Dai Greene 9,022 (2.64%)
Amir Khan 6,262 (1.83%)

[redarmi]

Possibly the best 4/9 shot ever on final figures he was a 1/100 shot