Austin and Atlanta share the best odds of landing Amazon's HQ2, says Irish betting site PaddyPower.
Back in October, PaddyPower put Atlanta’s odds of landing Amazon’s $5 billion second headquarters at 2-to-1, beating Austin (3-to-1) and Boston (6-to-1).
But as of Dec. 31, PaddyPower reports that Atlanta and Austin each share a 3-to-1 chance of landing HQ2.
Among other top contenders, PaddyPower as of Dec. 31 gives Boston a 7-to-1 chance; and Washington, D.C., and New York City each a 14-to-1 chance. Check out PaddyPower's odds list here.
But how reliable is PaddyPower, and what exactly is it? Its forecasting has been questioned widely since it prematurely and incorrectly paid out $1.1 million to people who bet that Hillary Clinton would beat Donald Trump in the presidential election. It declared Trump's campaign dead three weeks before the election.
However, it is a 29-year-old Ireland-based betting powerhouse that stretches far and wide online and in the real world — mostly in Europe. The Irish Times reports PaddyPower's first-quarter revenue last year equated to about $566 million, and it turns the heads of respected media outlets.
A Jan. 2 story from Fortune, for instance, notes that, "When cities submitted their bids in late October, Fortune turned to a popular betting site to see which of the more than 200 candidates had the early edge. Fast forward to the new year, and the initial favorite — Atlanta — is still at the top of the list, but its chances have declined from 2/1 to 3/1 and it now shares the perch with southern rival, Austin, Tex."
Both cities offer much of what Amazon seeks, but Atlanta recently started boasting of something unique: Amazon lobbyist Jacob Oster registered Dec. 7 with the Georgia state ethics commission, the Atlanta-Journal Constitution reports, though it's not clear exactly what he'll lobby for or against.