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27 February 2009 |
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Rumours regarding possible winners of Oscar awards start to circulate in media long before the ceremony. Sometimes such assumptions turn into so-called “leaked winners list” and their authors insist that they know for sure who will get the trophies. Same story happened this year when purported list of Oscar winners was published before the ceremony. Usually such lists drive people to bet with significant sums of money on unlikely nominants causing them at the end to loose huge money. Below I considered some points that could be useful for bettors in assessing the fair value of such leaks:
- Ballots containing votes of the members of Academy are received 4 days before the ceremony. So any leakages dated older are absolute fake because by that time no one on the earth could know the winners’ names.
- Count is conducted just by 2 men from PWC (leading audit and consulting company worldwide) and final results are sealed into envelopes 1 day before the ceremony. During that day they kept in PWC office at undisclosed location. So, no one in the Academy itself is aware of winners before Ceremony. Therefore any leakages from Academy or purported winners lists signed by academy official are not possible.
- PWC accountants have usually 3 days to deal with ballots and to come to final results. During these days their location is isolated enough. However no one can assure that accountants don’t disclose information to their close relatives or friends. I think channels like phone, messaging, email are still available for them during those days. So potentially the only way information could leak it is via very close people to whom they don’t keep secrets at all, even if they are not allowed to.
- Lists of winners are not composed at all. Names of winners are individually allotted to envelopes. Besides that each of two accountants have to memorize the list. Any other information such as who came second in each category or how many votes were received are never disclosed.
- PWC is proud to note that there has never been a single leak or security breach.
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