© Jonathan Nackstrand/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images The winner of the 2015 Nobel Peace Prize will be announced in this room in Oslo on Friday.
Five people in Oslo, all appointed by the Norwegian Parliament and all sworn to secrecy, already know who is winning the Nobel Peace Prize, to be announced on Friday.
For everyone else, the winner’s identity is unknown. To many, it is an irresistible topic of speculation — and gambling.
International bookmaking sites, which take bets on just about any unknown, including the winner of the Republican presidential nomination in the United States and who will play the next James Bond, are accepting bets on the Peace Prize.
Betting on events in which the outcome is known — like the Academy Awards or the Nobel Peace Prize — is illegal in the United States, but internationally, and in Britain in particular, bookmakers are free to accept such bets.
Across Britain’s largest gambling sites, bettors have in recent days spent tens of thousands of dollars placing bets on the Nobel prizes for Peace and Literature, a pittance compared with the hundreds of millions gambled on large sporting events like the World Cup.
Nevertheless, betting on the Nobel prizes is “an annual fixture in the betting calendar,” said Rory Scott, a spokesman for Paddy Power, a gambling site that operates in Britain and Ireland.
Paddy Power has tallied around 10,000 pounds, about $15,300, on Peace Prize bets alone, since it opened betting several days ago.
“The big mover is Angela Merkel,” Mr. Scott said of the German chancellor, who is the site’s odds-on favorite to win. “Before she made the announcement on housing 800,000 refugees, she was at 66 to 1; after the announcement she was at 25 to 1. She is now down to 2 to 1.”
Mr. Scott said bettors, or “punters” as they are …Read More
Source:: PM Newspaper
