The 2012 London Olympics has drawn rave reviews from just about every corner of the world and one industry, in particular, is smiling from ear to ear as a result of the overwhelming success the Olympics has done to their business.
UK sports books are looking at an unprecedented growth in betting turn over from the Olympics. According to The Telegraph, Ladbrokes is forecasting a turnover of around £80 million in the two weeks when the Olympics was in full bloom. That number is moons apart from the £4 million turnover witnessed during the 2008 Beijing Olympics.
Likewise, Coral also said that the Olympics also drew a lot of new bettors into the mix as researches have shown that over 3 million people made their first dip into the world of sports wagering during the two-week sports spectacle.
Another sports book, Betfair, has also reported increased betting activity at the London Games. Compared to their performance during the Beijing Olympics, Betfair announced that a little under 100,000 customers made bets in London, twice the number of folks that did the same in Beijing. Of all the Olympic events being offered, the men’s 100-meter final ended up becoming the event with the biggest action for Betfair, receiving bets from over 19,000 customers, a lot of whom, presumably, staked huge sums on Usain Bolt’s continued dominance on the sprint race.
Then there’s Sporting Index, which, according to Intergamingonline.com, reported receiving nine times as many bets compared to their numbers from Beijing while 70% of their clientele made at least one bet on the London Games. The overwhelming interest on the Olympics allowed the Sporting Index to put up lines on all 302 events from 36 sports compared to just 16 four years ago.
Sporting Index Group Mark Maydon told Inter Gaming Online that while expectations were already high for the Olympics, the action it generated surpassed even the most optimistic of estimates. Maydon said: “We made a conscious decision 18 months ago to invest heavily in our trading team, algorithms and modeling for the Olympics and we’ve been rewarded with unprecedented levels of interest.”
