Mike O’Kane, Ladbrokes Trading Director, confirmed to the Racing Post that his firm has split its hedging activities between the on-course market and exchanges.
“We have obviously monitored the racecourse market for many years and we have been concerned by the use of exchanges by course layers, particularly in 2005,” said O\’Kane.
We are hedging into all markets and have been for a while. We are using the exchanges when it is appropriate, although the majority of our hedging is still on the racecourse, but we do want to use all the markets available to us.”
David Hood, William Hill Director of Racing and Public Relations, said his company was pleased with the results of the new hedging policy introduced in early November, but added that Hills would prefer an exchange-free betting ring.
“Our hedging activity over the last three months has proved every bit as effective as we expected it to be,” he said.
“Hedging is about managing our off-course liabilities and this will invariably cause fluctuations in the market place.”
“By placing our hedging funds directly on to an exchange we are achieving what we used to in the ring in pre-exchange days. That said, we maintain that an exchange-free betting ring would still provide the most satisfactory market place and SP mechanism for the industry.”
“But, for Hills to return solely to hedging in the ring, we need to be confident that the course market is maintaining the integrity of the SP and not simply \’arbing\’ it back on to an exchange.”
David Stevens, Coral spokesman, confirmed his firm were still trialing the new system for hedging.
“Coral\’s position on hedging remains unchanged; we are still in a trial period of using both the course market and the exchanges, and it is too early to say what our long term policy will be,” he said.
In separate news, on-course bookmakers working at Catterick on Thursday decided to mirror the experiment undertaken by their southern colleagues at a Folkestone meeting in November and trade without recourse to betting exchanges.
The layers are keen to demonstrate to the major bookmakers considering changing their method of hedging bets that a vibrant on-course market can still exist without the use of exchanges such as Betfair and Betdaq.
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