Gambling mad
Despite the best efforts of Buddhist monks and Gamblers Anonymous, Britain’s largest bookmaker, Ladbrokes, described the opening weeks of June as ‘the biggest in bookmaking history’. With the three biggest betting sports — football (Euro 2004) racing (Royal Ascot) and golf (US Open) — firing on all cylinders, it has been a stratospheric week for turnover, with an unprecedented £300m bet on the football and £150m at Royal Ascot alone. But amid the celebrations, bookies continue to notice a shift in betting habits away from racing. ‘Half our internet turnover is football now,’ says Ladbrokes spokesman Balthazar Fabricius. Last week they wished it wasn’t, as bookmakers took a huge hit on England v Switzerland, with Wayne Rooney particularly painful as first scorer
Goering versus boring
Whenever bookies or racing’s great and godawful start talking science in an effort to justify their actions, this column does a Hermann Goering and reaches for its revolver. The British Horseracing Board’s (BHB) latest wheeze is a proposal to reduce the maximum number of runners in handicaps to 14 (with a few famous exceptions, such as the Grand National), a figure that just so happens to be significantly more advantageous to the bookmaker, because he has to pay out on only three, rather than four, places. The BHB denies that this is a political stitch-up designed to assuage the bookmakers, and cites a ‘long and complex modelling procedure’ as the ‘scientific’ reason behind the move. This, of course, is cobblers. The truth is that bookies prefer 14- rather than 16-runner handicaps because they make more money from them. As one independent academic wrote recently, ‘Place odds represent worse value than a straight win bet in all cases except handicap races of 16 or more runners.’ Bang, bang, they’re dead
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Crisis? What crisis?
Aidan O’Brien must be grateful that he’s not a football manager. Despite a dismal season that has seen the trainer of the most powerful bloodstock operation in the world record just a single (sub-standard) Group One victory, amid a catalogue of failures and expensive near-misses, barely a whisper of criticism has been directed at the young ‘Master of Ballydoyle’. Such is the power wielded by Magnier & Co that the Irish press corps in particular declines even to acknowledge that there is a problem. One of its number, Brian Gleeson, when asked on the BBC last week about O’Brien’s poor form, replied that ‘he was going well in Ireland’. Irish punters would disagree. A 46% strike-rate conceals the fact that more than half of O’Brien’s Irish winners this season have come in dismally uncompetitive maidens. And the law of Sod being what it is, who should land Coolmore’s biggest success of Royal Ascot? Not O ‘Brien, but the annoyingly young and promising David Wachman, who also happens to be the son-in-law of Coolmore boss John Magnier. Damson’s runaway victory in the Queen Mary was the first Royal Ascot runner for Wachman. If O’Brien were a football boss, he might be awaiting a vote of confidence from the chairman
Silver lining for Tabor
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The best gamblers go against the crowd, and just as the clouds were gathering around the O’Brien camp on Thursday, the gimlet-eyed Michael Tabor was coolly studying the generous 10-1 available on his colt Moscow Ballet in the Hampton Court Stakes (in a normal year, he’d have been a 5-2 chance). Cue a rare ray of sunshine for O’Brien and a large influx of cash (six figures at least) into Tabor’s bulging pockets