Betfair pays out early on Scottish referendum ‘No’ vote

Scots headed to the polls this morning to decide whether or not to end their 300-year-old union with England. Voting (and counting) will continue throughout the day and an official result won’t be known until early Friday.

That hasn’t stopped Betfair from calling the result. They have already paid out a ‘six-figure sum’ to all punters in their sportsbook who staked money on a ‘No’ result. They made this decision Tuesday before a vote had even been cast.

According to the number crunchers in their betting exchange, gambling patterns indicated a 79% likelihood of a “No” vote, and so confident are Betfair in the ability of astute punters in their exchange to correctly pick the outcome of these kinds of political events, that they aren’t going to bother waiting for the votes to be tallied.

As Betfair’s Naomi Totten put it….

“Political bettors have often favoured the exchange as their choice of betting platform and it has historically provided an accurate prediction of political outcomes. Paying out early on our Sportsbook is testament to the esteem in which we hold the illustrious track record of our Exchange.”

Of course punters backing the ‘Yes’ result will still get paid out if that is in fact the referendum result…they’ll just have to wait until Friday, but perhaps shouldn’t be overly confident of a collect. The payout also only applies for bets in the sportsbook, not bets placed in the exchange where bets are pier to pier, rather than placed against the operator.