Via Niall O’Connor, Bloomberg:
William Hill Plc, a London-based bookmaker, will pay out on a number of bets on the fate of Harry Potter because of an “ambiguous ending” to the seventh and final novel about the boy wizard. The bookmaker repaid 50,000 pounds ($101,060) in wagers and a further 40,000 pounds to fans who either bet that he died, killed himself or was killed by his nemesis Lord Voldemort. “It was a fairly ambiguous ending, open to various interpretations, and so whatever way we settled the bets would have annoyed some people,” said Rupert Adams, a William Hill spokesman. “So we paid out on all the bets.’‘ The bets on the outcome of “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows” were the first William Hill had ever taken on the ending of a book. Three employees at the bookmaker read the novel by J.K. Rowling and failed to agree on the ending of the novel, Adams said. “Now we have to hope that Rowling doesn’t bring out another Harry Potter book in the next two years,” said Adams. “We have already taken 12,500 pounds on that bet.” [...]
#1. The William Hill assessment on the ending of Harry Potter in the 7th book, The Deathly Hallows, disproves Emile Servan-Schreiber’s cocky line of thinking —”there is just no room whatsoever for disagreement”.
#2. It also disproves Jed Christiansen’s gregarious and uninformed line of thinking —”there’s no controversy here whatsoever.”
#3. It proves that Chris Masse was right (once again) when he wrote that “NewsFutures expiry judgment on the fate of Harry Potter is too elliptic”.
#4. It shows the difference of ethics between William Hill and InTrade-TradeSports. When the outcome is ambiguous, pay both sides (or void all bets). That’s maybe what InTrade-TradeSports should have done for the North Korean Missile prediction market, which is, at this day, the biggest scandal in the field of prediction markets. Of course, it is easier to send to Chris Masse anonymous insults from forged e-mail accounts rather than to address traders’ problems with an ethical angle.
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UPDATE: Emile Servan-Schreiber’s comment…
As I answered to Niall earlier through more personal channels, I suspected that William Hill’s decision has more to do with the bad wording of their HP bets than with the clarity of the book’s ending (in which Harry survives). So, I looked around on the web and I found the bets and terms that William Hill proposed:
————————————————
Who Will Pot Potter**4/5 Lord Voldemort
5/2 Professor Snape
6/1 Draco Malfroy
6/1 Ron Weasley
6/1 Harry Potter
14/1 Lucius Malfroy
14/1 Hermione Granger
20/1 Neville Longbottom
20/1 Proffessor Slughorn
25/1 Hagrid
25/1 Cornelius Fudge
33/1 Arthur Weasley
33/1 Dawlish
40/1 Proffesor McGonagall
50/1 Lupin
50/1 Mr Filch
50/1 Dobby
100/1 Ginny Weasley
100/1 Tonks
100/1 Fred/George Weasly
100/1 Uncle Vernon
Other On Request**If Harry Potter survives all bets will be void and stake money will be returned -You cannot lose!
————————————-What happened is that HP survived and WH just had to return all stake money, as the ** terms forces them to do. It really has nothing to do with any ambiguity about HP’s fate.
By the way, anyone who wanted to argue that HP is dead at the end of the book would simply have to reproduce here, at MO, the relevant passages of the book. Any other data or argument is of little value.
NEXT: The NewsFutures expiry judgment statements should not be elliptic.
As somebody who traded on this market on Newsfutures, I have written to Emile Servan-Schreiber, asking him, whether in the light of William Hill’s decision, his company will now also be paying out on all oucomes.
I think that were they to fail to do so, in the light of the decision by the world’s second largest bookmakers, they are in danger of making themselves seem both arrogant and lacking in credibility.
The decision by William Hill, does not of course undermine my original notion, that William Hill had closed their book on the event early, in response to large bets placed by informed insiders…..
As I answered to Niall earlier through more personal channels, I suspected that William Hill’s decision has more to do with the bad wording of their HP bets than with the clarity of the book’s ending (in which Harry survives). So, I looked around on the web and I found the bets and terms that William Hill proposed:
————————————————
Who Will Pot Potter**
4/5 Lord Voldemort
5/2 Professor Snape
6/1 Draco Malfroy
6/1 Ron Weasley
6/1 Harry Potter
14/1 Lucius Malfroy
14/1 Hermione Granger
20/1 Neville Longbottom
20/1 Proffessor Slughorn
25/1 Hagrid
25/1 Cornelius Fudge
33/1 Arthur Weasley
33/1 Dawlish
40/1 Proffesor McGonagall
50/1 Lupin
50/1 Mr Filch
50/1 Dobby
100/1 Ginny Weasley
100/1 Tonks
100/1 Fred/George Weasly
100/1 Uncle Vernon
Other On Request
**If Harry Potter survives all bets will be void and stake money will be returned -You cannot lose!
————————————-
What happened is that HP survived and WH just had to return all stake money, as the ** terms forces them to do. It really has nothing to do with any ambiguity about HP’s fate.
By the way, anyone who wanted to argue that HP is dead at the end of the book would simply have to reproduce here, at MO, the relevant passages of the book. Any other data or argument is of little value.