'ASHES HORRIBILIS!'
London – 5th January 2007. Australia wrapped up the first 5-0 Ashes series whitewash since 1920-21 earlier today and left bookies all over the country facing colossal payouts. Sporting Index, the leading sports spread betting bookmaker, must now part with over £500,000 after today’s Sydney debacle. “It’s been our very own Ashes Horriblis”, moans Sporting Index PR Director Wally Pyrah. “Punters were desperate to get with the Aussies in every way possible from the start”, he added, “and sadly we took them on and got our fingers burnt”.
The bulk of Sporting Index’s massive payout comes from bets on the ‘series supremacy’ and the ‘correct score’. Remember, as with all spread bets, the spread betting bookmaker makes a prediction on an event and challenges punters to bet on whether it’s pitched too high or too low. What they win or lose depends on what stake they bet with and how right or wrong they are. Now, the problem for Sporting Index was that they originally only predicted a narrow Australian victory and punters piled on the home side to win more than just the predicted two tests. The fact that Ricky Ponting’s men went on to win all five tests meant the maximum payout possible.
The Series Supremacy market awarded 10pts for winning the Ashes and a further 5pts for each test match won. The market opened up as a predicted Aussie victory by 11-14pt and immediately saw a £2000 buyer (betting higher) at 14pts. Another £2000 buyer followed at 15pts and then a further £5000 buyer at 16points. The eventual result of an Australian victory by 35 points meant that these trades alone cost £200,000. Australian captain Ricky Ponting’s red hot form throughout the series was also extremely expensive and he’d scored more than his series runs prediction with nearly three test matches to go. His 196 in the opener from Brisbane netted one customer £26,000 and another £13,000.
Pyrah stressed that although the morale in the office was pretty low, there were certainly some huge positives to take away from the series. “It may have been a disaster financially, but we took over 50,000 bets from punters staking over £2.5 million. That’s not bad when you consider the one-sided nature of the contest and anti-social timings”. He also joked that if the series had been played in England like last time, his firm might have expected double the bet numbers and possibly double the losses! Speaking of the last Ashes series, Mike Atherton recalls in his latest book how Pyrah had gloated after England’s historic win how Sporting Index had ‘won enough money to hire the QEII, sail to Australia and have a barbeque on Bondi beach’. His words may have come back to haunt him…
