Bookies take heart from Grand National wins

IRISH and British bookmakers put a tough Cheltenham Festival behind them with last weekend’s sporting events — most notably the Grand National — going in their favour.

The large number of winning favourites at Cheltenham last month saw bookies take a combined estimated hit of between €4 million and €10m. However, a 14/1 winner at Aintree, last Saturday, helped them win some of that back. A win for Ruby Walsh’s horse, on Saturday, would have cost Paddy Power around €1.4m, for instance.

While the main betting companies don’t go into too much detail of how they fared in the aftermath of such big racing festivals, each of the big players on both sides of the Irish Sea — Paddy Power, Ladbrokes, William Hill and Coral — claimed a satisfactory outcome to the weekend.