American bookmakers can not take bets on the outcome of the presidential election. But for the British Betfair, the current presidential race in the United States has already become the most popular event: five days before the vote, the volume of bets exceeded 350 million dollars. It was predicted that it would reach half a billion. By comparison, in the last US election in 2016, players bet 257 million on the opposition of Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton, and 146 million for the Brexit referendum, according to Forbes in the bookmaker’s office.
But globally the current elections in the U.S. to the record for the volume of bets taken by bookmakers are still very far. For example, more than $8 billion was raised worldwide for the 2018 World Cup finals in Russia, where France and Croatia met.
Voting in the U.S. is over, the results are still unknown, and bookmakers continue to accept bets. Here’s what they said in another major British betting company, where Business FM called under the guise of a customer:
It will be very difficult for Russians to bet on the outcome of the US presidential election on the website of the British office. Gambling on the Internet in Russia is prohibited, and the websites of foreign bookmakers are blocked. In Russia itself, bookmakers have the right to accept bets only on sports, continues Boris Gubkin, an expert of the information and analytical portal “Rating of Bookmakers”.
British bookmakers predict victory in the U.S. election incumbent President Donald Trump, while before the counting of votes predicted the winner of the Democratic candidate Joe Biden. On Wednesday, the odds for Trump’s victory at the bookmaker William Hill were 1/2 (that is, for every 2 pounds of sterling bet, only 1 pound of winnings). On the night before the election, the ratio was 6/4.
True, both bookmakers and their clients are sometimes wrong. Thus, at the beginning of the week, the coefficients of the British offices showed that, most likely, the winner of the American elections will be named as early as Wednesday. But it didn’t happen. Even the counting of votes in the United States is not over yet.
Nevertheless, the Australian bookmaker Sportsbet has already recognized the winner of the race Joe Biden and, moreover, paid the players who bet on the candidate of the Democratic, 23 million wins. I wonder how the bookmaker will get out if Trump becomes president of the United States again.