Profiting from the Newspaper Death Sentence
Betting companies are becoming past masters at turning news events into lucrative PR opportunities with novelty markets, but the latest from William Hill will win them few favours among the hacks it’s hoping to get them to write about it.
Today the company circulated a press release sensitively titled ‘The Newspaper Death Sentence’, offering odds on which masthead will disappear first, five days after Fairfax boss Greg Hywood said it would eventually stop printing weekday editions.
The Age is the hot favourite at $2.60 followed by the Sydney Morning Herald on $3.20.
And while these kind of markets are started by bookies to generate media attention, it’s fair to say this one has already backfired with the people they are hoping to win over, judging by the comments on social media.
Utterly fuckt.
William Hill – scum. https://t.co/8lAniF5qMw
— Monkeys; Typewriters (@chris8875) May 11, 2016
The latest market on William Hill… #speaksvolumes @fairgofairfax ?? pic.twitter.com/MwS2gD1n6O
— Heather Williams (@HJdubbleU) May 11, 2016
Hopefully William Hill can pick up at least one of the subs to lose out in this mess to help them with their press releases, as this one seems fairly confused as to who the favourites actually are.
“On the back of Fairfax’s assessment, William Hill Australia has the Sydney Morning Herald as the most likely option at $3.70 closely followed by the Age at $3.50 and the Australian Financial Review at $4.50,” it says.
However the table of odds it puts out underneath that gives another story altogether.
First newspaper to stop printing weekday editions
Sydney Morning Herald 3.20
Daily Telegraph 8.50
The Australian 5.50
The Herald Sun 6.80
Australian Financial Review 4.80
The Age 2.60
Presumably Fairfax & News have put a real mathematician onto the problem to model the ‘game theory’ outcomes. It’s a classic prisoners dilemma scenario between News & Fairfax.
First to shut presses gains the cost savings and can concentrate on what it means to be pure digital.
Last to shut presses gains the entire pool of print-ad budget, boosting viability and increasing resource to produce better content and/or product in both mediums, milking print until it drys up organically.
If both play the waiting game, Fairfax runs out of cash before News (presumably) or both shut simultaneously with no gain from position taken and both with cash drained.
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