Weekend Review: Euro 2016 knockout results "disaster" for bookies

Bookmakers suffered a torrid start to the knockout stages of Euro 2016, despite performing well during the group stage of the tournament.

Ladbrokes described yesterday’s football action as a “disaster” for the company with France, Germany and Belgium all progressing to the quarter finals.

“The group stages were excellent but we are giving a lot back in the knockout stages,” said Ladbrokes’ Alex Donohue. “Turnover is very high, which is a plus but we could do with some results.”

Sunday proved to be bet365’s worst day of the tournament so far, with the favourites all securing wins and resulting in a heavy loss for the operator.

“It looked a punter friendly treble and so it proved as bet365 suffered its worst day at the Euros when losing ?12m as France, Germany and Belgium showed their Sunday best,” bet365’s Steve Freeth said.

However, there was still cause for optimism at the firm, with England’s failure to beat Russia and Ronaldo’s penalty miss key highlights in what has been a good performance during the group stages.

“It may all change from the Last 16 onwards, especially as our ‘Penalty Payback’ offer comes into play, but we finished the group stage a lot better than we started it,” added Freeth.

The group stages provided a “very healthy” margin for Unibet, but conceded the knockout stages so far were very much in favour of its customers.

“In contrast the knockouts have started very well for our customers, yesterday with the odds on treble, including the comeback from France resulted in one of our biggest ever closing days,” said Unibet’s William Vickery.

While Saturday was a good day for Betfred with the well-backed Gareth Bale failing to score, Sunday’s results turned things on its head for the British bookie.

“Belgium are the punters’ friend at the moment,” said Betfred’s Peter Spencer. “Belgium are now the third favourites to win the tournament because of the way they played and the side of the draw they are on, a lot of people are piling in on them.”

Meanwhile, the dramatic EU Referendum generated a huge amount of interest across the betting industry. Oddschecker revealed that over the course of June, Brexit eclipsed both football and horseracing page views.

“In terms of page views, Thursday 23 June was huge – commanding over 10x as many views as our Euro 2016 page and just shy of 400,000 unique users,” the affiliate’s head of commercial, Guy Harding, said.

And following the outcome of the referendum, Betfred added it would be changing the way it prices political events.

“Like most bookies, we predicted a big win for remain because we based our judgement on the amount of money that was staked,” said Spencer. “What we should have done was worked out the amount of people betting.

“When we’re predicting events for the future, we’re going to look at the number of people betting rather than the amount that is being staked, then we will be closer at getting the result right.”