Online gaming sites now allow bets on political events

With the BBC reporting that 68% of men and 61% of women in the UK make bets at least once a year, it is clear that the gaming industry is a thriving business worth billions of pounds to the British economy. This is in part because of the country’s liberal attitude towards betting, which allows people to place bets on almost anything.   

As an indication of this, we recently noticed that online gaming sites now take bets on political events throughout the world.

In the US, by contrast, betting on politics is illegal. Yet people aged over 18 in the UK can now place bets on everything from the outcome of the Brexit referendum, to the size of Donald Trump’s manhood (or ‘Tiny Don’, as Trump Tower’s smallest resident is known here at the Kaiser Report). 

The decision to stay in or leave the EU will have serious effects on the everyday lives of UK citizens. Yet it may have more immediate effects on the bank balances of Brits who place bets on the outcome. 

Given Trump’s clueless ideas on how to reduce the national debt, we wouldn’t mind betting on him getting trounced by Clinton in the presidential election this November. Yet the fact that no-one expected him to receive the Republican nomination in the first place shows that anything is possible.

So how much is the online gaming industry worth?

According to the iGaming Business Market Monitor, the UK online gaming market will surpass £4 billion mark this year. And considering the market continues to grow in double digits, this is highly plausible.

The market grew 12% in 2015. While the top three sites are Paddy Power, Bet365 and William Hill, lesser-known casino sites like Europalace.com are also proving immensely popular. 

British betting sites do much more than give and take money based on outcomes. In fact, they often serve as the best predictors for political contests. The recent failure of opinion polls to predict the outcome of the 2015 General Election in the UK shows this. So, while the likes of YouGov were predicting another hung parliament, most betting sites made David Cameron the clear front-runner.

This is true to such an extent, that the New York Times in the US and the Financial Times in the UK frequently refer to betting sites as a means of predicting such outcomes.