Ascot a royal pain in bookies’ interims

The World Cup may be grabbing most of the sporting headlines, but bookmakers are more likely to remember last week's Royal Ascot race meeting for some time, and for all the wrong reasons.

The prestigious flat racing festival was a bonanza for punters. By our calculations, based on the official starting prices reported in the results for the meeting’s five days, a €10 bet on all favourites, including joint favourites, in all 30 races, would have yielded a profit of €191.20.

In other words, an outlay of €300 would have generated €491.20, a return of 63.5 per cent.

Bookmakers build margins into their odds designed to ensure that, over time, punters lose between 10 per cent and 15 per cent of the money they stake, so a return like that at a high-profile betting event such as Royal Ascot is significant.

However, even that swing in the punters’ favour does not tell the whole story. A number of well-backed non-favourites also won, indicating that the bookies lost money on those races as well.

Irish horses played their part in all of this. Leading the charge were stablemates Sole Power and Slade Power, well-backed and fancied winners on the meeting's opening and closing days. Ironically, both are owned by members of the Power family, of Paddy Power fame.

Royal Ascot’s bookmaking results are likely to have an impact on the sector’s results for the first half of this year.

A number of its players have already indicated that poor football returns in the closing months of the English premiership are likely to drag on their interims.

A losing Royal Ascot will aggravate this. While England and Spain's early exits from the World Cup might ameliorate this somewhat, it is unlikely to be enough, and the tournament's favourites, Brazil, are still in and look set to remain there until the closing stages at least – or, more relevantly, beyond next Monday, when the first half of the fiscal year ends.