Bookies reflect on "record-breaking" election

Bookmakers were this morning weighing up the impact of a surprise Conservative Party victory in yesterday’s UK General Election in what was described as a “record-breaking” political betting event.

All polls leading up to the election had the Conservatives and Labour neck-and-neck and pointed towards a hung parliament, but the Tories defied the odds and this morning crept past the 326-seat mark needed to command a majority in the House of Commons.

An estimated £100m was predicted to be wagered before to the election, dwarfing the £10m figure during the Scottish referendum, and Betfred spokesperson Mark Pearson said turnover had far surpassed previous political betting events.

“In terms of turnover this election was a record breaker for a political event,” he told eGaming Review.

“After seeing a landslide of money for the Conservatives all day long Fred called it over at 9pm and paid out on the Tories winning the most seats,” Pearson added.

Prior to the election many of the industry’s biggest operators ramped up their political betting offerings with the launch of General Election-dedicated micro-sites from both Betfair and Ladbrokes.

Betfair was the first operator to showcase its election strategy after hiring respected political betting blogger Mike Smithson on a consultancy basis to coincide with the launch of its Betfair Predicts website and mobile application.

The operator’s exchange has built a reputation for correctly calling the outcome of political events and despite predicting the Tories would win the most seats, the firm said it was also stunned by the outcome.

“This result has shocked all commentators including the political betting community,” Betfair spokesperson Harry Phillips said.

“The markets had retained a pro-Conservative bias in several areas in the lead-up to the election, with the Tories consistently rated 1/5 for Most Seats, but the scale of the win has been a shock to punters and they have been scrambling all night to cover positions,” he added.

Ladbrokes was the second firm to beef-up its political betting operations with the launch of its own micro-site Ladbrokes Lowdown last month featuring an interactive constituency map that used live prices to display the expected election outcome.

David Williams, head of consumer PR at Ladbrokes, told eGR the firm was pleased with its offering despite paying out an estimated £2m as a result of the Conservative victory.

“We saw some monster cash bets in retail on a good number of eventualities but the growth in digital betting since 2010 has been tremendous and a real boost for us,” he said.

“It became the biggest non-sporting betting event in our history with the past 10 days seeing a terrific spike in customer acquisitions through all our digital channels,” Williams added.

And never to be outdone, Paddy Power yet again tried to create a social media storm after the Irish operator parked a lorry with the message ‘You’re getting sacked in the morning’ outside of the Houses of Parliament.

Following the election result this morning, the share prices of both William Hill and Ladbrokes were up 5.2% and 9.9% respectively on the London Stock Exchange after the Labour Party had promised a crackdown on fixed-odds betting terminals (FOBTs).

In its 2015 manifesto Labour pledged that local communities would be given power to review the licences of betting shops in their area and either ban or reduce the number FOBTs which would have likely had a significant impact on the firms’ retail revenues.