Weekend Review: Bookies on top after Super Sunday clashes
Operators reap the rewards of football upsets while Sky Bet describes racing results as a "bloodbath" for punters
A bumper weekend of sport, which featured England’s top-four Premier League sides facing-off on ‘Super Sunday’, resulted in yet another solid profit for bookmakers.
Saturday’s football got the weekend off to a flyer as popular choices Man Utd and Everton were both rolled over. In total just four of the 10 most popular favourites with Sky Bet won, leaving the Leeds-based bookie with a “very healthy margin”.
However, Sunday’s football was slightly more mixed for the layers, with Sky Bet reporting “significant seven-figure losses” as seven of their top-ten favourites won outright.
“Had Man City beaten Tottenham the losses would have been far far worse and we owe some thanks to Mauricio Pochettino’s men,” said Sky Bet head of PR Sandro Di Michele.
Ladbrokes however reported a much more enjoyable Sunday, as Leicester fell to a stoppage time winner after being “a very popular choice for punters”, according to Ladbrokes PR officer Alex Donohue.
The meat in the Super Sunday sandwich saw some money head back to punters as Liverpool hammered six past a hapless Aston Villa, but Donohue said Liverpool’s erratic form this season meant “there was far less damage done” than there might have been.
In the day’s late kick-off, “the vast majority” of Ladbrokes punters were backing Manchester City to turn over Spurs, and they doubled down in-play after a controversial penalty put the north London side ahead just after half-time.
But the day’s second late winner also went the bookies’ way to round-off a very good weekend on all metrics, according to Ladbrokes.
BetVictor’s head of communications Charlie McCann said his firm enjoyed a winning weekend on the pitch thanks to an excellent Saturday but added the firm “needed a draw in either game [on Sunday]; the late winners hurt”.
Punters also had better luck with the smaller derivative bets, with Jamie Vardy proving a popular first goal-scorer option and both top-four clashes ending 2-1 – traditionally the most popular correct score bet for all football matches, according to Betfred spokesman Peter Spencer.
The football winnings were matched by “one of the most profitable weekends of racing in a long time,” according to Sky Bet.
Much of the damage was done on Saturday at Newbury, with several high profile favourites getting rolled over in “bloodbath for punters”, Di Michele said.
In the Six Nations, England’s second-half stomping of the Italians to cover a big handicap was profitable for punters, but the volume was dwarfed by football according to Ladbrokes. In cricket, the rubber match in England’s one day series with South Africa was even less important, falling “way way down the pecking order”.
Spencer said the volume on rugby union and cricket combined was less than half of the Premier League.
Elsewhere, Phil Mickelson’s missed five-foot putt on the last at Pebble Beach was a boon for the bookies with “Lefty” well backed before and during the AT&T, according to McCann.