Bookies are baffled by Booker Prize betting

Published on Saturday 1 August 2009 20:01

HILARY Mantel is the favourite to win the Man Booker Prize for Fiction after 95 per cent of all bets were on her novel alone, bookmakers revealed yesterday.

William Hill said it had "never seen a betting pattern like it" after a spate of bets highlighted Mantel's Wolf Hall, set during Henry VIII's reign, as "the only one in the running for the punters".

"It's almost like an unspoken psychic rumour has gone round that this will be Hilary Mantel's year," spokesman Graham Sharpe said, as the odds were cut from 12/1 to make it the clear 2/1 favourite.

"We'll lose a five-figure sum if the support continues. It is as though a tip has gone around the literary world telling everyone that Mantel is a certainty."

Sharpe said the always-popular contest was notoriously difficult to call and betting does not usually heat up until the shortlist of contenders is announced in September.

But hundreds of people were placing bets of up to 50 on the 57-year-old from Glossop, Derbyshire, this year, just days after the long-list of 13 books was chosen from the 132 potential contenders, he said.

"Quite a lot of them (people placing the bets] are what we would describe as literary insiders," he said. "Nobody quite seems to know why."

But he ruled out the notion of any foul play, saying: "It would be unusual for the judges to know who they were picking as the eventual winner already. I would be very, very surprised if the judges had already decided.

"It's not in the realms of crying foul or anything like that, it may be just a case of a lot of people deciding on the same one at the same time."

He added it was "very, very rare to see this type of gamble" and said it was "definitely the biggest Booker gamble since Life of Pi was backed as though defeat was out of the question a few years ago".

In 2002, bookmakers had to suspend betting on the outcome of the Booker Prize after the award's official website accidentally displayed a dummy page naming Life of Pi's author Yann Martel as the winner.

Organisers insisted similar pages had been prepared for all of the shortlisted authors and Martel said that he had hoped it was a lucky omen before going on to win the prize.

Rival bookmaker Paddy Power also made Mantel's Wolf Hall the clear favourite.

The winner of the prize will be revealed on October 6.