Bad Bookies

Bookie bashing has become a common theme of this blog. I do have other gambling stuff I’d like to talk about, but like a hack 1980’s comic talking about a stupid Irish mother-in-law eating bad plane food, I just can’t help myself.

The scumbaggery of the gambling industry is my personal low hanging fruit.

I apologise if it’s getting boring – I will change the subject soon. Just not today. So take my hand as we sink our teeth into another bitter but reachable peach.

The trouble with unripe stone fruits is that they’re just not that juicy. Which is apt, because neither is this blog’s subject matter. I’m just going to take a cursory dive (note to middle managers trying to sound important, not all dives are deep) into bad betting value.

I’ve picked out a couple of popular big name online brands and crunched the numbers on two different popular football markets, so that you can see how much commission they’re making.

I could’ve picked out household-name high street bookies, whose odds will be every bit as bad, but if you’re reading this then you probably gamble on the more contemporary sites, so I figured I’d cater to my audience.

But it’s worth noting that whether you go to work in a suit and bet on your phone whilst a-poop, or prefer to shuffle into an actual shop smelling rakishly lagerish, you are being ripped off. 

First up, PaddyPower’s outright odds for Euro 24. Bear in mind I grabbed these a few hours before the tournament kicked off, so they’re an accurate reflection of the market before any results came in. Here are the figures:

The ‘Odds’ are decimals as it makes calculations a little easier. The ‘Bet’ is how much you’d have to wager to get back £100 including your stake. I presume you can crack the ‘Team’ column for yourselves. 

Total outlay to ensure a three-figure win, is £117 (full disclosure, that’s rounding up a penny for effect). That means PP is keeping an average of 17% of everything you bet on that market.

EDIT: While the market is 17 percentage points above a completely fair book, it actually translates to a 14% house edge. My thanks to a reader for pointing out the lazy maths in the comments.

Maybe that doesn’t sound too bad, but that figure is typically closer to 10% in a competitive book, so it’s on the high side. But let’s re-frame it.

If you were told the bank was going to charge you 17% interest on your deposits, you’d be swift to take your custom elsewhere. And they do things yearly. Paddy wants to keep a sixth (edit: a seventh) of your money after just one month!

Excuse my tmesis, but that’s out-blimmin-rageous. Let’s see if their competition does any better.

Next, it’s Bet365 and their final score odds for Scotland Vs Switzerland tonight. I’ll spare you the table, as it’s even less interesting than the last one. But out of interest, if you think it’ll be a barnstormer you can get 500-1 on a four all draw.

This information was a little harder to come by as Bet365 don’t just list the possible results – they require you to select the number of goals each team will score and then just show the odds for that outcome. 

To be fair, that’s a nice innovation for usability, but it has the handy side-benefit (for them) of obscuring all the other results, making it harder to work out their edge. But I managed it anyway thanks to a bit of data entry.

If you want to secure a £100 win on that market then you’ll have to bet £122. This time an even juicier 22% commission for the Coates family (edit: it’s an 18% house edge). And that doesn’t take into account all the outcomes. It’s only for results of up to four goals per team.

It doesn’t change things very much statistically, because the vast majority of the time teams don’t score that many goals. Although Scotland did lose 5-1 in their last game, so if you’d bet all of the default available options to win £100, you’d have just lost all £122. 

I think I’ve landed my point, and for once, I won’t labour it. Betting with the big name bookies is expensive. Know that the more complex the market (i.e. the more outcomes a bet has) the harder it is to calculate their edge, and the more they will rig it to their benefit. 

Do yourself a favour, bet sparingly and only when it really matters to you. If you can’t find a friend to bet against instead (more ideas on this in the coming weeks) when there is 0% commission, then use an exchange where you’ll pay just a few percent.

You have to vote with your feet, or the bookies will take advantage of you. Don’t let them get away with their greed.