Ordinary Gweilo

This week the Jockey Club announced that although their turnover on football betting was lower than expected, the profit margins were much better than they had expected.

They say that this is because of some unexpected results in major competitions, but my information is that it is actually a matter of mug punters and good odds setting. Unlike racing, where there is effectively a pool of money to be shared out amongst those with successful bets, football bets are fixed odds and there is no guaranteed profit margin. On the other hand, if they get it right, the profits can be very high.

I understand that the exotic bets are the most profitable for the Jockey Club, presumably because they offer the prospect of a high payout if you get it right. One involves forecasting the ‘result’ at half-time and full-time in a number of games, which sounds pretty much like a lottery to me. The suspicion is that the punters are just picking numbers at random. If they are, they’d be better off putting money into Mark Six or the Triple Trio.

Two observations on this:

Firstly, it seems clear that the illegal bookmakers are still making a good living, so perhaps the shrewd punters are staying with them and the Jockey Club is attracting people who don’t know much about football.

Secondly, this is another example of how lotteries and betting generally act as a form of regressive taxation. It’s generally the less well-off who are making these bets, giving their money to the Jockey Club and thence to the government or to ‘good causes’. The same thing happens in the UK with the National Lottery.