Who will win the Oscars?

The Oscars Best Picture race looks like a two-way photo finish, according to the latest odds at Smarkets.

CODA, given around a 3% chance a month ago is close to taking over at the top of the market from long-time favourite The Power of the Dog.

How good are the betting markets at forecasting the Oscar winners? Over the last three years, the favourite has won 48/71 times across all categories (68%). But for Best Picture specifically, the recent record has been less good:

• 2021 Nomadland WON (closing odds 1.22)
• 2020 1917 (1.7) LOST to Parasite (2.75)
• 2019 Roma (1.8) LOST to Green Book (3.5)
• 2018 Three Billboards...(2.0) LOST to The Shape of Water (2.25)
• 2017 La La Land (1.2)  LOST to Moonlight (5.0)

Five data points is obviously not something to over-interpret, but it may be that the ranked voting system used in the Best Picture race just makes it harder to predict or less likely to correlate with all of the other industry awards that are usually a guide to the winners. The fact that the Academy has expanded the range of people who can vote (up from 6,261 in 2016 to 9,427 in 2020) may have also helped create a new dynamic. 

As for this year, I'm still inclined to side with The Power of the Dog at the current odds. CODA is a very endearing film but seems on the corny side to be winning the big one. With only three nominations in total, it'd be a very unusual Best Picture winner (The Power of The Dog has 12). On the other hand, this feels a little bit like the 2019 contest. Roma was the heavyweight favourite with ten nominations but the more crowd-pleasing Green Book managed to upset the odds.

Elsewhere, the next biggest betting heat has been for Leading Actress. You could make a case for any of the five runners but the late move has been for Penelope Cruz, whose chances have shot up from 2% to 16% in the last couple of days.