Weekend Review: Goals galore punishes bookies
Bookies endure "tough" weekend of football, but benefit from Anthony Crolla defeat
A bumper weekend that saw 32 Premier League goals scored proved to be an uncomfortable weekend for the bookies, with results across Europe the saving grace for the layers.
With goals galore in the Premier League, Saturday’s results didn’t go Ladbrokes’ way, according to Alex Donohue.
“Lots of goals is never good as increasingly customers are placing additional bets looking at over 2.5 goals, BTTS, and match result and BTTS,” he said.
“Racing results on the other hand were fantastic but it’s only on the biggest of big days when these can cancel out poor football results,” Donohue added.
With both Manchester clubs winning, bookies unanimously enjoyed Bournemouth’s victory over Everton on Saturday, including BetVictor’s Everton supporting Charlie McCann.
“It pains me to say it but Everton did us a massive favour on Saturday losing at Bournemouth with the rest of the Premier League results very punter-friendly with United and Arsenal very popular in the televised games, which turned out to be non-events with punters counting their money by half-time,” said McCann.
William Hill’s Joe Crilly described Saturday’s football as “tough”, with results in La Liga the highlight for the firm. “Real Madrid drawing against Las Palmas was our best result of the day online,” said Crilly.
Betway said it got off to a good start to the weekend with French champions PSG losing away to Toulouse, but was eagerly anticipating the return of Friday night Premier League football.
“We look forward to the return of that next week as the turnover on these live Friday English games has been excellent,” says Betway’s Alan Alger.
Sunday turned out to be an “excellent” day for the operator. “West Ham were well backed and Rangers failing to win also helped,” added Alger.
On the boxing however, Betway said it made a loss with punters going against Anthony Crolla in his lightweight fight against Jorge Linares. “A Linares KO would have inflicted further significant damage,” added Alger.
It was better news for BetVictor, who said it “kept the cash” with punters getting behind Crolla who was fighting in his home town of Manchester.
And Betfred, who were title sponsor of the fight, said they made big gains on the fight.
“We gained on that big time as 90% of punters were backing Crolla either as a KO or going the distance,” said Betfred’s Peter Spencer.
Finally. Unibet lauded its sponsorship of the Champions League of Darts which saw the Professional Darts Corporation make its debut on the BBC.
“Unibet and darts broke new ground over the weekend with the inaugural Unibet Champions League on the BBC, providing us with great exposure in the mainstream,” Unibet’s William Vickery said.
“We continued to increase darts turnover and expect the Unibet World Grand Prix to continue this trend in the second part of our three sponsored events this autumn, culminating with the Unibet European Championship at the end of the month.”