Opinion: The Betting Olympics
Mark Maydon, commercial director at the Sporting Index Group, looks back on London 2012, the first Olympics where betting truly came alive.
There was much debate before the start of the Olympics as to how big a betting event London 2012 would turn out to be. In truth, no-one really knew, but at the Sporting Index Group we were pretty confident that it would take off and “ like any winning bet “ it’s always satisfying when you are proven right.
It was 18 months ago when we made a strategic decision that there was going to be a surge in betting interest this time around and invested accordingly, building algorithmic models and ensuring we had expert traders for every Olympic discipline. Greco-Roman wrestling traders aren’t the easiest to come by!
We priced up all 36 sports via our B2C arm, Sporting Index, and took bets on all 302 medal events (yes, even synchronised swimming) with bet volumes up nine times from Beijing. Indeed, just as the Olympics dominated the UK media, it also dominated the minds of our customers with 70% of our clients who had been active betting with us for the past three weeks placing at least one bet on a London 2012 event.
As well as seeing record turnover for our B2C business, we were busy supplying a number of operators worldwide with our Olympics pricing service via our B2B arm, Sporting Solutions. All of our partners reported unprecedented interest compared with previous Olympics. Prior to the start of the tournament, some bookmakers were predicting total turnover of just £20m in the UK, but industry estimates have been constantly revised upwards and it seems as though the final amount was nearer £100m.
There is no doubt that the outstanding performances from Team GB helped to drive interest. One of our most popular markets was the total number of gold medals Team GB would win. We initially quoted 24, but after a low-key start we saw plenty of big players opposing Great Britain and were forced to move the market down to 20. When the gold rush happened some of our customers then started to show their patriotism, but we were already sitting pretty and cheered on every home medal.
The industry as a whole took a bit of a hammering on the athletics as there was plenty of interest in both Usain Bolt and Mo Farah. The 100m final was a shocking result for us at Sporting Index because we were offering a prediction on the winning time. Our initial quote was 9.73 seconds but as soon as it became clear that the track was lightning quick we had to move sharply to bring this down. There were plenty of sellers and Bolt’s 9.63 winning time was a bitter pill to swallow.
London 2012 has broken all records when it comes to Olympics betting, but it’s going to be interesting to see what happens in Rio in four years. Obviously the event start times have been kind to us this year, so the unsociable hours will be a challenge in 2016. That said, golf and rugby sevens will be added to the schedule so turnover rising again in Brazil might not be odds-against.