The bookmakers took a hammering at Goodwood on Friday in the Betfred Mile. It was a massive loss for the bookmarks across the board in the race as soon as Franklin D crossed the line. In doing so, he became the shortest priced winner to have ever won the race. The four year old running at 10lbs took the line and and hit the bookmakers for six.
He was part of a brilliant Ryan Moore treble on the day. It was a rough Friday all round for bookmakers who saw five of the seven favourites on the day landing victories at the Sussex track, and there were reports that the British betting industry had lost around £20 million on a Fantastic Friday for the punters.
“It has been a catastrophe,” Betfred’s Andrew Griffiths added. “Punters have totally cashed in today. The Betfred Mile is our race, sure, but we thought somebody would be at least 7-2 in the morning. They weren’t. Obviously we won’t know the true extent of the damage until tomorrow morning but we have surely done over a million.”
William Hills’ Jon Ivan-Duke agreed it had been a “horror show” for his employers and estimated that Franklin D cost his firm seven figures with an overall loss on the day of £2.5million.
“Overall, we are probably looking at an industry figure of something like £10 million,” he said.
David Williams of Ladbrokes underlined that Friday simply had augmented a disastrous Goodwood meeting as a whole.
“Goodwood has been anything but glorious for the bookies,” he said. “The Gurkha and Big Orange were bad enough earlier in the week but Franklin D’s win was much the worse. We are reeling as we head into the weekend.”
Betfred decided to push out Franklin D, the market leader to 5/2 as one of their “Fred’s Pushes offers”, which made things worse in the end of them and with them running Best Price Guarantee as well, it means that accumulators placed beat the SP by a long way and added even more misery upon the bookmaker and the industry.
“Franklin D landed the biggest gamble of the season,” Griffiths added.
“Usually bookmaker reps inflate these figures but I genuinely would not be surprised if across the industry the figure was something like £20million,” Tony Calvin, a Racing UK presenter said.
“Most punters would have beaten SP in every race and if you take William Hill’s’ figure of £2.5million then that adds up.”
