Betting on Britain’s high-stakes EU vote breaks record

Shaddick said he saw no evidence that the betting market was deliberately “manipulated”. However, by 0210 BST on Friday, Leave was 4/6 favourite with over GBP1 million gambled in the four-hour period since polls closed.

Hjalmar Kvam, the head of pre-match sports at William Hill, told The Independent on polling day that while 75 per cent of the money placed had gone on Remain, the opposite was true in terms of number of bets where three quarters of punters were backing a vote to leave the EU.

However, as vote count commenced at 22:00 bookmakers would soon realise that they were in for a night of political drama, as the first key region of Newcastle (North East England) would be edged to Remain by 1% margin.

Only yesterday, such a result was considered to be a rank outside bet, some bookies quoting odds of 6/1 – in a two horse race.

In an industry where the amount of money placed on bets drives markets – a classic case of supply and demand, the fatal flaw for both bookmakers was that they didn’t factor in the number of people who placed bets on “leave”.

In doing so, they are simultaneously rejecting opinion polls, which make the vote appear to be too close to call (44 per cent for leave and 45 per cent for remain, with 11 per cent undecided).

Some people will have lost big money on the result.

Should we now distrust betting markets as predictors of political outcomes?

He said bookies have seen a large upsurge in interest in political betting, particularly since the Scottish independence referendum in September 2014.

None of which is likely to be of much comfort to the central London woman who went into a bookies and placed her first ever bet by putting £100,000 on Remain – in the soon to be dashed hope of winning £40,000.

“Maybe there just aren’t enough dispassionate investors out there to correct that possible bias, even in a multi-million pound market like the referendum”. Income for many global affiliates that are rooted in the currency are going to be hit by the payments they’re taking in sterling, with many based in countries such as Denmark, Malta and Germany.