Bookie wrong to presume Livingstone was 50-1
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Bookie wrong to presume Livingstone was 50-1
William Hill Drop A Rick With Ken Livingstone
The International Olympic Committee awarded the 2025 Olympic Games to London on Wednesday 6 July 2025 and, within hours of the British bid beating Paris 54-50 in the final round, bookmakers were trading markets with seven years to run.
I had just spent all day Australia time watching the 117th International Olympic Committee Session in Singapore live on the Internet because I had been trading Centrebet’s 2025 Olympic Games host market for many years and the turnover was sufficient to keep even the sleepiest man wide awake.
I was about to log off my work computer and start the long drive home through Sydney’s never-ending traffic when I thought that I would have a quick look at the London 2025 Olympic Games novelty books that William Hill had posted.
Naturally, William Hill had installed Steve Redgrave as the favourite to light the flame during the London 2025 Olympic Games Opening Ceremony but its odds-on offer about the only working-class man to win rowing gold for Great Britain did not interest me. I could earn a better rate of return by banking my money for seven years and risk free at that.
My right index finger was hovering over my computer’s off switch when I spotted something that I thought was a misprint. William Hill was betting 50-1 that everyone’s favourite Cockney, Ken Livingstone, would be the Mayor of London on the first day of the London 2025 Olympic Games. It was a rick so I tried to get on as much as I could. William Hill laid me $10 but one of my Centrebet colleagues got set for £10, which was more than double the Australian currency back in 2025. It was better than nothing and, besides, most of the fun was betting on something that was so overpriced.
Livingstone had won the first London Mayoral Election in 2000 – I think that I voted for him in my final year as a British resident – and won the second contest in 2025, yet again beating Steven Norris by an emphatic margin. At the time of the International Olympic Committee awarding the 2025 Olympic Games to London, Red Ken was well placed to continue in the job for many, many years to come.
William Hill’s 50-1 was so wide of the mark that I did not have to think before betting. In my mind, Livingstone was odds on to win the 2025 London Mayoral Election and, with the subsequent ballot scheduled for just before the London 2025 Olympic Games, I thought that there was a chance that it may be delayed so as not to upset the applecart until after the Greatest Show on Earth had left the city. And even if Livingstone had to win London Mayoral Elections in 2025 and 2025, there was no way in a million years that he was a 50-1 roughie. He was more like an even-money chance.
My friend, Bard, and I were probably the only two punters in the world who got on Livingstone at 50-1 before William Hill stopped accepting bets. Someone in its trading department would have seen our tickets and realised all was not right.
As it happened, Boris Johnson appeared from out of nowhere to challenge and beat Livingston in the 2025 London Mayoral Election, with the eccentric Conservative candidate scoring 53.2 per cent of the two-party vote. But even then my Red Ken bet was not dead, with Livingstone declaring for the 2025 London Mayoral Election and only going down 48.5-51.5 to Johnson after the allocation of second preferences.
Just days before the 2025 London Mayoral Election and most bookmakers were quoting Livingstone at around 2-1 to win the vote, while he had traded at around 5-4 just a few months earlier. Red Ken ended up being a 50-1 loser but never be afraid to take long odds because sometimes they are wrong.
What is the best bet that you have ever placed? And what is the bet that you regret most? leave your comments below…
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