Weekend Review: Spurs and Man City stumbles bust punters' coupons
Bookies enjoy winning weekend in the football despite Chelsea's comfortable victory over Leicester City
Draws for Tottenham Hotspur and Manchester City helped ensure a winning football weekend for the layers despite suffering losses at Ascot’s Champions Day.
The return of the Premier League from an international break saw home favourites Chelsea comfortably beat Leicester City in Saturday’s early kick-off, although results later in the day also proved very welcoming for the bookies.
“Everton and West Brom came to our rescue on the Saturday 3pm coupon front, whilst the two live games at Crystal Palace and Middlesbrough saw the hosts both 1-0 â not many goals, both teams not scoring and both favourites chinned â ideal,” bet365’s Steve Freeth said.
Sky Bet’s Sandro Di Michele described it as a “very tough” weekend for punters with just three of its top six most popular selections winning.
“Both Man City and Spurs let Sky Bet customers down on the Soccer Saturday Priceboost which contributed to a very profitable Saturday for the layers,” he added.
It was a good weekend for William Hill too, which said Brighton & Hove Albion’s 2-2 draw with Preston North End in the Championship was “very helpful”.
With most of the Premier League heavyweights having already played, Sunday proved to be somewhat quieter for the bookies.
BetVictor’s Charlie McCann described yesterday as “a bit flat”, and expects punters to be back in force for this evening’s clash between Liverpool and Manchester United.
Di Michele said Sky Bet punters instead turned towards the European leagues, but the outcomes were very much still in favour of the layers.
“Huddersfield were disappointing early on and even though the most popular selection of the day Southampton won comfortably, customers were let down by Inter, Lazio and Fiorentina,” added Di Michele.
Over at Champions Day from Ascot, it was a mixed bag of results for BetVictor. “The wins and stellar performances of Minding and Almanzor on Champions Day at Ascot clawed back earlier losses for punters and the referee would have called that a draw,” said McCann.
However, the same couldn’t be said for Ladbrokes with results favouring the punters. “Champions Day definitely captured the imagination of casual racing fans, the kind who may only usually bet on the National and Cheltenham, and they definitely had the better of us,” said Ladbrokes’ Alex Donohue.
And despite Sky Bet making a good start at Ascot, results soon turned against the bookmaker.
“After getting off to a flying start on the champions day card things started going in favour of the customer when our feature priceboost Minding took the Queen Elizabeth II stakes, followed afterwards by the heavily backed and popular favourite, the French challenger Almanzor winning the Champion Stakes impressively,” said Di Michele.
Elswhere, Unibet said it suffered a blow in the boxing following large turnover from punters backing Tony Bellew to knockout American BJ Flores.