By Donal

When Nigel first pitched the idea of Hubdub to me, one of my immediate reactions was; “this will be great for the NFL off-season”. The coaching changes, free agency, trades and most importantly: the NFL draft. With a dramatic Superbowl XLII in the books, now is the time to find out.

For an event whose appeal owes much to our efforts at forecasting its outcome; prediction market sites devote surprisingly little attention to the NFL Draft. Perhaps this lack of coverage is attributable to the more established practice of forecasting the 1st round of the Draft in its entirety; something the prediction market model doesn’t really cater for. But there is so much going on in the draft, it offers the potential for many interesting prediction markets.

Just drawing on previous experience, here are a few that come to mind:

• Who will be the first player picked in a given position (QB, HB, WR)?

• Who will be this years Brady Quinn or Aaron Rodgers?

• Which round will some Troy Smith, Eric Crouch, Maurice Clarett or Marcus Vick like figure be drafted in (if at all)?

At Hubdub, connecting these markets with their associated news flows and tracing news reports to outcome percentages over time adds an extra dimension of interest. Just imagine how dramatically this would have worked in a “Who will the Texans pick” market the day before the 2006 Draft.

Plus, at Hubdub, aspiring Draft Gurus will have the accuracy of their predictions reflected in their $ gains (or losses). Unlike certain other Draft forecasters, there won’t be a rush to obfuscate a slew of inaccurate predictions by immediately grading the selections of every team (I’m sure there is someone who gave the Chargers an A grade back in 1998).

So although we at Hubdub are looking forward to March Madness, a new MLB season and the business end of the NBA season, we are pretty excited about the NFL Draft. I’m sure there will be a lot of interesting markets and hopefully we will find a number of Draft Gurus amongst the ever expanding Hubdub membership.

We will be announcing more on our coverage of the NFL Draft shortly… …in the mean time check out the Hubdub sports category for the top open sports markets.

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