Bookies face meltdown

The blossoms may be blooming and the birds singing in crystal-blue skies, but it has been a miserable and ruinous spring for Britain’s bookmakers — and if well-backed favourites keep on coming in the way they have since the very first race of last month’s Cheltenham Festival, the next three days in Liverpool could see some of the independents literally lose their businesses.

Thursday was the start of the huge Aintree meeting, which, as even once-a-year punters know, climaxes in the Grand National on Saturday. For serious racehorse gamblers, this is traditionally the last real betting action of the jumps season, the

so-called Getting Out Stakes.

But this year, with big-race results going spectacularly the other way, both the betting shop chains (which can afford to stand a few seriously big hits) and the on-course layers (who cannot) fear meltdown at Liverpool if punters successfully play up their winnings as they did at Cheltenham.

Some of the wounded bookies are not even willing to rejoin battle. Gary Wiltshire, the independent who earned respect for rebuilding his business from scratch after being wiped out by Frankie Dettori’s famous Magnificent Seven winners, warns: ‘Bookies can forget all ideas of getting even at Liverpool. The National is a wonderful spectacle, but bookmakers hate the race — how often do we get a [profitable] result?”

Wiltshire says he will be plying his trade in the far less fraught betting rings of Lingfield or Hereford on Saturday and wryly adds: ‘I left Cheltenham having lost £40 000 over the three days, but when I heard the fate of some of my colleagues in the ring I felt that I had won the pools.”

Likewise Victor Chandler, the legendary layer usually described as Europe’s biggest independent bookmaker, is minded against travelling from Gibraltar to take up his firm’s pitch on the rails at Aintree after suffering his worst Festival since 1971.

Neal Wilkins, Chandler’s press officer, explains: ‘Of the 20 races at Cheltenham, 10 of them were won by the favourite, and while we had the odd result go our way by [the final day], it was a case of mission impossible.”

But that was just the start of this March of miracles for form punters deploying the bookies’ own money to double up, as Wilkins details: ‘Then we got another bloody nose when Intelligent landed a gamble on the Saturday [after Cheltenham] in the Midlands National, followed by enormous plunges which came off on both the next two weekends, Ar Muin Na Muice at Newbury and, arguably, worst of all, Pablo and Red Carpet in Lincoln day at Doncaster.”

Wilkins forbears to mention that one of his boss’s rails colleagues, the Scottish bookie Freddie Williams, laid Irish master punter JP McManus a bet of £400 000 to £200 000 on Ar Muin Na Muice, whose Gaelic name means ‘On the pig’s back” but who performed like a Celtic tiger when backed as if defeat was out of the question in the valuable Newbury Mares’ Final late last month.

Williams, no wild plunger but a shrewd judge, was also a heavy loser at Cheltenham but is big enough to take it on the chin on the swings-and-roundabouts principle. ‘It’s definitely been the worst National Hunt season I’ve ever known,” he admits.

‘At Cheltenham the average is five winning favourites in 20 races. The most they’ve ever had is seven, yet this year there were 10 and for all the on-course bookies it was carnage.

‘I don’t think you can put it down to any one single factor. It’s more that a combination of things went in the punters’ favour. But you’ve got to put it into a proper context — at Cheltenham the previous year [the champion jockey] Tony McCoy couldn’t do a thing right. He only rode one winner and most on-course layers cleaned up.”

Williams has a thriving Ayrshire mineral water business to back him up but is keen to point out that a seriously bad run can be terminal for racecourse operators with less capital behind them.

Bob Pittard of Yeovil, who has been betting in the west country for 40 years, would agree. Pittard has a pitch behind the main stand at Cheltenham and for traders such as him a bet of £5 000 as opposed to a Williams-style £100 000 would be serious money. He recalls: ‘One man who bets along the line from us was in tears after La Landiere won the second-last race at the Festival this year. He ran out of cash and he and his team were trying to get their punters and the other bookies to take cheques or credit notes.”

Wiltshire might regard all this as perhaps the last straw for smaller on-course bookmakers who in recent years have had to pay heavily to buy their racecourse pitches. Indeed, he has put all his own pitches up for sale. He complains: ‘Six months ago there were 20 pitches being advertised [for sale]; this week there are more than 600. Obviously the big meetings still attract interest, but there are no new buyers and some bookies take the view that it is best to cut and run and are virtually giving them away. I can’t sell mine.”

This year’s Cheltenham disaster explains why few souls are now brave enough to launch a career in what was once famously described as ‘a licence to print money”.

As Wiltshire explains: ‘Even those who deal in less substantial wagers did their brains. One Scottish bookie who came down expecting to cop next winter’s holiday money for the Maldives lost £40 000. He’ll be lucky to make Margate. I know of one firm in Ireland that was caned for almost £1-million.”

Can they hope to get it back on Saturday? Not likely, says Wiltshire: ‘Aintree is a completely different type of programme. Bookies hate the National as it revolves around the once-a-year punter who bets a pittance and is not prepared to have a decent thump.

‘For some bookies, another bad experience at Aintree like they had at Cheltenham will mean they’ll be heading for the dole queue.” —