Ten on number 12, please. Ten on number 12.
Whether you’re waging the cash in your pocket or hundreds of thousands on a single race,
this is an industry which attracts gamblers from far and wide.
And it’s not just here at the races. Every year, billions of dollars are staked at boxing
arenas, on soccer fields and golf courses all around the world. So what keeps people
coming back for more, and is it ever possible to beat the bookie?
Five pounds. Just five quid, turned it around. Bit of racing, bit of money, so I’m always
up for it. I have not got a clue what I’m doing.
Three times in our history we’ve paid out the big one million.
Just got my first one in and fingers crossed.
If they can beat us, they’re usually pretty happy.
For the bookmakers, the global sports betting business is booming. Last year, the total
amount bet was more than 500 billion dollars. Even after bookmakers paid out winning bets,
the total gross turnover was still nearly $65 billion dollars.
To give an idea of how lucrative the industry has become take a look at Denise Coates.
She’s the CEO of BET365, one of the UK’s biggest betting firms. She’s also the best
paid female executive in the world. In 2018, she earned $353 million dollars, that’s
two and a half times more than Apple’s Tim Cook, the CEO of one of the most valuable
companies in the world.
So surely that means the people betting, otherwise known as punters, are losing all their money?
I got a lovely pair of wedding shoes. Yeah that was our biggest winner.
Someone had a £5 acca a few weeks ago and won £35,000.
When those days did come, when you are... You cry.
Terrible gambler, I lose all the time. I had a full head of hair when I started this business.
This game can tame lions.
If you’re new to betting, one of the first things to understand is betting odds.
Once you understand how likely an event is to happen, you’ll be able to work out what
your potential winnings will be.
At first, it may appear confusing, but let us explain it for you.
All betting odds do is present how likely an event is to happen.
Let’s take for example a coin toss. When flipped there’s either a 50% chance of it
landing on heads or tails.
For sports betting in the UK, that’s displayed as evens. Much of the rest of the world uses
a decimal based system, which equates to 2.0, while the U.S. uses its moneyline method,
which would display the odds as 100.
For an event like horse racing with several runners there are multiple possible outcomes in a race.
If a horse is priced at 4/1 to win a race, then the bookmakers believe there’s approximately
a 20% chance of it happening. So, for every $1 you bet, you’ll get 4 back plus your
original stake if the horse crosses the line first.
So how do the bookies come up with these odds, and is there a way for punters like me to
win big? I’m going behind the scenes of British bookmaker Fitzdares to find out how it all works.
Very good to see you. Come on in, welcome to Fitzdares. Racing’s just started.
These are the brokers and the traders.
Fitzdares is a private bookmaker that offers an exclusive membership for high rolling gamblers.
We’ve been taking bets since 1882 which is probably the oldest in the world.
Some customers have a quarter of a million pound credit line and that’s not a bad thing,
we’re not encouraging them to gamble, it’s just the way they do business and they pay monthly.
They get their own phone number. So when they phone us on any phone in the
world, we know it’s them.
Hi Peter, how are you? Yeah i’m very well thanks.
The biggest bet you’ve ever taken? 350 thousand, yeah. Let me have a look, the
next race at Sedgefield? Lots of money for Dawn O’Vaunt today. Yeah sure, 100 reverse,
one and four. I’ll put that on for you.
For the traders taking bets and the success of the business as a whole, each sporting
event has to be given the right odds and it’s the job of one man.
Gentleman holding the racing post. This is Glyn, head of pricing.
Hi Glyn, how’s it going?
For big sporting events Glyn uses what he calls a matrix.
Ok here we are. The first thing I would do is to look at the weather forecast, you have
to know what the forecast ground is going to be. Having got the weather, I settle down
with my blank sheet of paper and I do this matrix and I’ve got eight runners down here.
We start with form so horse A as we can see gets three ticks. He probably won last time
out, he might have been a close second. E has got no form, no recent form at all. Ground,
if a horse doesn’t act on the ground it hinders its chance immensely of winning that race.
So we’ve got A, B, like the ground. E doesn’t like the ground, absolutely hates it.
Distance, the horse’s optimum distance means a tick. Rank the trainer form as well,
if all his horses are running out of their skin then you’ve got to take that into consideration.
Top jockey booked up, then obviously that’s going to get a tick as well. Position of the
race and whether they’re going to be at the back or the front of the field in each
race. The ones with the most ticks obviously going to be strong fancys. So that’s probably
favorite 2 to 1. All the other horses, they’re all relative to the price of the favorite
winning the race. 4 to 1, 8 to 1 as well, 16, 14. That is our matrix complete.
Today, with the rise of online gambling, it’s hard to find a sport without a betting market
open somewhere. So does it really matter more when there's money on it?
It only matters when there’s money on it. Completely irrelevant whether I’ve won or
lost it’s just a day out. Not for me, I just love it anyway.
Are you ever interested in a horse race if you’ve not got a bet on?
No, never. If you’re going to watch it just have a
little bet. You could have 50 pence and it makes a difference.
It’s about enjoyment, it’s not about just bet this horse and if you lose that’s it.
Some people eat meat, some people are vegan. Some people drink, some people don’t but
for those that do enjoy to have a speculation and find that that’s a little bit of picante,
then that’s great and we’re here for them if they are.
For some sports, however, betting really does matter. Horse racing here in the U.K. is only
possible because of the money generated from lost bets.
Racing and betting have a shared history in terms of the returns we receive from the betting
industry to be reinvested into our participants. That’s to owners and trainers and jockeys
and stable staff. As well as ensuring that the sport is regulated to the highest standards as well.
The Horserace betting levy board is in charge of dividing up the money and reinvesting it
back into the sport. The levy is 10% of bookmakers gross profits of their horserace betting business,
in 2018 that was more than $126 million dollars. The largest portion is for prize money, followed
by investment into regulation services, racecourse fixture incentives, industry training and
veterinary science and finally any other administrative costs.
The money is designed to benefit those who work directly in the sport as well as communities
in which racing operates.
The growth in the UK betting industry in the last twenty years has coincided with the rise
in online gambling. The global online gambling market is expected to more than double by
2024, and be worth nearly 100 billion dollars.
Many bookmakers have already developed their own sports betting apps to cash in on this
trend. That’s moved the majority of money staked from the high street to almost anywhere
with a phone signal.
It's completely changed and people now can can get on their phones they can bet straightaway,
they can also bet “in running”. You can see the movement in the market as well as
it as it literally happens.
The ease at which betting is now possible has had negative effects, however. In 2017
a record number of gambling addicts were hospitalised in the UK, a 50% increase from the year before.
How much of your responsibility is to make sure that people aren’t betting too much?
Oh yeah quite a lot, for sure. If we have a relationship with them and are
talking on the phone then we can make decisions together with them.
It’s a difficult one because you want to say are you sure you’re ok, but then they’re
losing. It’s the last thing they want to hear. Sometimes we just have to draw the line
and say I’m afraid we can’t take any more bets.
There’s lots of actually quite good protocol in this. From having timeouts to actually
people restricting themselves so we can’t ever contact them again or for a period of time.
They say good things come to those who wait.
Some believe that the problem has been made worse by the U.K. deregulation of gambling
advertising since 2007. Who are paying seven places each way.
In a 2013 report by Ofcom, the U.K. communications regulator said there’d been about a 1400%
increase in gambling ads since 2005, around 1.4m a year on our TVs.
But for the U.K. government the growth in the gambling industry has generated significant
funds through taxes. Last year, the tax revenues from online sports betting alone was worth
£339 million or $452 million dollars to the U.K. treasury.
While there are strict rules on gambling in certain countries such as Japan, India & much
of the Middle East, there are countries that are keen to open themselves up to this lucrative industry.
The United States, for instance, is expected to become the world’s biggest sports betting
market by 2023 as the number of states with legal sports betting is set to grow from 8 to 25.
Not only is sports betting set to become increasingly global, but through the development of digital
platforms, the opportunity to place a bet has never been easier.
But, as this sector grows, how much responsibility should governments take to balance an industry
that can enhance the experience of a sports fan, but also limit its damaging effects on society?