Tales from the trading floor part two: David Brown of Banach Technology recalls the biggest bet settlement he's ever seen

EGR Intel: What is the biggest bet settlement you’ve seen or best betting story?

David Brown (DB): Working for the biggest companies in the UK throughout my career, I’ve seen many huge wins, these take the shape of small stakes multiple bet wins running into hundreds of thousands of pounds and even some hitting a £1m limit at the time. However, those traditional customers in betting shops, in particular, who picked their favourite jockey’s mounts every day or favourite greyhound forecast traps offered some of the most heart-warming big win stories. For many, a win of only a few hundred pounds made a significant difference to their lives and these wins were always a pleasure to pay.

One incident always sticks in my mind….

In William Hill’s digital division in the early new millennium, we had a telephone betting customer betting entirely on football. He had a tremendous ante-post win on Serie A netting him a few thousand pounds. He then went on what can only be described as an amazing run betting form at the end of the season. He saw big bets wins on the playoffs, cup finals, etc., from around Europe. Winner after winner followed, it was uncanny. As a business, you begin to worry this might never stop and you have no job to return to the next day. He eventually reached just over £500,000 and had told my colleagues he was aiming for that big £1m mark. He had already paid himself handsomely and was betting with ‘our’ money, which is a situation any bookmaker does not want to find themselves in.

He then staked six figures on Darlington to beat Peterborough in the play-off final. Surely, the biggest bet ever placed on Darlington? But it was one step too far for him and Peterborough nicked it 1-0 with a goal quite late on. His unbelievable run of form had come unstuck at the hands of Peterborough, much to the relief of our finance team. He did return and try again in his quest for £1m; I do hope he reaches it one day (after I leave preferably!)

EGR Intel: How do you see the future of trading technology taking shape?

DB: We have already seen the use of predictive technology embedded into trading systems. Bookmakers have huge databases of results, bets and customer activity. It was a logical step to use this data to analyse and start to predict customer behaviour. This is particularly helpful in customer and liability management, predicting price movements and shaping trading plans. No doubt, as technology improves, this area will keep pace with that development. Algorithms will continue to evolve and become ever more sophisticated.

As the industry sees more mergers and takeovers over the last few years, this presents its own technical challenges. Companies can be operating a number of different brands under one parent owner with many different trading systems operating largely in isolation. So, rationalisation without impacting the customer is going to be a significant requirement to create internal efficiencies within the sector.

Also, I believe as brands do grow to be truly global, operating in many jurisdictions simultaneously then tolerance of any downtime of core systems will be challenged.

I think CEOs and CFOs will be expecting trading technology to be stable and available 24/7 every day of the year with much more built-in resilience. Downtime on key days like Grand National day will simply not be tolerated, and this means better engineering, capacity control, and internal and external IT capabilities.

EGR Intel: Do you feel sports behind closed doors, especially racing, has made a difference to trading?

DB: Of course, it has. Racing has been using the ‘off course’ mechanic to price its product rather than the ‘on course’ market. This is not a fluid system as has been in place for as long as anyone can remember. No doubt the statistics will emerge overtime on how this has affected ‘over-round’ and the value offered to the customer.

Sports such as table tennis became hugely popular early in lockdown as there was very little else to bet on. Turnover on table tennis went through the roof compared to traditional levels when there was no football (especially) or racing to bet on.

Empty stadia for football also meant a shift in pricing for those matches. What is the factor built into the price for a club playing at home in front of a packed house and partisan crowd versus the relatively sterile atmosphere of an empty stadium? So, the fundamental price of the event was altered by playing behind closed doors.

Hopefully, we see fans return very soon to add that lost atmosphere to big sporting events!

Banach Technology makes up one-third of AllSported, a trading solution from Racing Post. The solution gives customers made-to-measure racing odds delivered with streamlined integration to build better books and to maximise profit. To find out more about AllSported visit www.AllSported.com.