SBC News Voice of the Sports Betting Industry
This week has seen substantial alterations in the odds on a Brexit with the potential for a Leave vote reflected in the odds as they’ve moved from 3/1 to a 6/4 average across bookmakers.
Jamie Loughead an Entertainment and Politics Trader at Star Sports discussed his views on the market’s fluctuation, and why he remains certain that Brexit won’t happen, with SBC News. Here’s what he had to say.
I find the polling at this stage utterly incredible. The Leave campaign fought a weak battle up until the end of May where it failed to land any major blows on the Remain campaign – on the economy, sovereignty, or TTIP. In recent weeks Leave has banged the drum of immigration, immigration, immigration and it appears to be working. Whether there really are secret EU plans to look to make Turkey a member state after the referendum is almost irrelevant, the public seem to be responding to it.
I remain of the view that while immigration is an important issue to about 30% of the population, I can’t believe that the critical floating voters will side with Nigel Farage in the polling booths. Voters traditionally gravitate towards playing safe, picking the nearest thing to the ‘status quo’ as a referendum approaches so while the polling looks very positive for Brexit, Leave support ought to ebb away before the vote.
Are there shy Remain voters who don’t want to admit to pollsters that they’re siding with Cameron and Osborne? I think there could be, we’ve certainly not seen any betting money for Remain in the last week just relentless money from Brexiteers.
In recent weeks we’ve also seen a big increase across the industry in the prediction for turnout in the EU Referendum. In April bookmakers expected turnout of about 61%, but now we’re expecting around 68%. This was largely due to a big uptake in late registrations to vote, but which way these latecomers will vote is likely to be crucial. The higher the turnout the less likely Leave are to defeat Remain, another reason I remain convinced that Brexit won’t happen. I personally expect a turnout of around 65% but Leave’s only real hope still lies in sub-60% turnout, which looks very unlikely.
So on that basis I continue to offer best price in the industry for Leave (currently 7/4), dodge laying Remain wherever I can and pray the polls are wrong for the second year running.
