Brexit - record breaking bets

Recent political events in Great Britain created a real furore among players of Sportsbook betting. One of the most important events in the history of Europe, namely British exit from the European Union, broke all existing records in the sphere of betting on non-sporting events.

The referendum was already unofficially called the ‘Brexit’ (the British exit from the EU). As it was stated in English mass media, and in particular in the Financial Times, a total amount of bets has become a well-known fact. In general, it was made up of about one hundred and twenty million pounds and this is equivalent to 153 million dollars. Still, despite the large sums of collected money, many of bookmaker companies suffered great losses.

The actual situation is as following. The major part of betting operators, which were the leaders in gambling sphere for a long time, agreed and came to the decision that the United Kingdom will not leave the European Union. And as the result, all the further bets on ‘stay’ or ‘leave’ were decided to count with the coefficient 2:9, where the ‘stay’ bet were leading.

William Hill, as one of the leading bookmaker operators managed to collect over three million pounds, but incurred losses sized of exactly 400 thousand pounds. Graham Sharpe, the social media and public relations director of the company, admitted that it was extremely difficult to predict the outcome of events in the particular event. The major part of players with private betting at William Hill, to be precise there were over 69%, made the right choice, betting on ‘leave’. Such betting success of bookmaker operators’ clients, according to representative of the company, actually ruined the current betting millionaires.

Still there exists quite another side to the coin, which this time was occupied by such bookmaker companies like Ladbrokes, Paddy Power, Betfair, Coral and Betfred. The current, actually winning, situation, which these betting operators appeared to be in, is fundamentally different from the position of those companies who suffered losses this time.

The Ladbrokes due to the low payouts for players betting on ‘leave’ have fortunately got the ‘planned income with six zeros’. This company went rather slight path and changed the ratio between the bets. Thus, the average betting size on the ‘leave’ was 70 pounds and the rates for ‘stay’ were 400 pounds.

As the representatives of the Paddy Power Betfair company stated, they have collected bets of more than 80 million pounds. Also, this bookmaker has paid out the biggest win on the current event. The ‘leave’ bet of 18 thousand pounds brought the lucky man over 99 thousand pounds as a gift. 

The Coral and Betfred companies collected over a million pounds for each, which were not expected. That resulted in their capital incensement and quite big payouts for their players. Their social media and public relations directors noticed as well, that players did the most of big bets on (the previously leading bid) ‘stay’. This fact could not but pleased the bookmaker operator companies.