The excitement of the US presidential elections are now over but it seems that some people were pretty confident of the Obama victory before the results had even been announced anyway. In fact, with the election taking place on Tuesday the Dublin based company Paddy Power paid out on Monday.
The announcement came in that day’s Irish Times, with the phrase “Sorry Romney, you’re not black or cool”. It then went on to confirm the early pay out on a win for Obama.
Irish betting firm Paddy Power confirmed that it has paid out over £400,000 to its punters who had backed Barack Obama before his re-election was officially confirmed. A rush of bets in the months running up to voting day had seen Paddy Power reduce the odds for an Obama win to 2/9, with the vast majority of the company’s punters guessing he would be re-elected rather than defeated by rival Mitt Romney.
A Modest Loss
Other betting firms followed the same trend, with William Hill having Obama at 2/9 and Romney at 10/3 as election voting began across the US. Graham Sharpe is a spokesman for William Hill and he said that they collected over £940,000 in wagers on the US election, which is a record amount for them. The win for Obama led to a “relatively modest” loss for them.
Among the biggest wagers with William Hill was a person in Manchester who £29,000 on Obama and won £68,000. There was also a customer who put £25,000 on Romney and, of course, lost the lot. The spokesman went on to confirm that the bookmakers gave a much clearer indication of how the election was going to play out than the polling firms did.
