Alastair Campbell’s son has been threatened with bankruptcy and police action over a £5 million loss from his failed football betting syndicate, The Times understands.
The daughter seems to write pieces about her sexual misadventures. The son as here. Well raised, eh?
Of course, it’s only twice so far which is merely coincidence.
How did Rory Campbell’s syndicate work?
Campbell used mathematical models to try and gain an edge over the football betting markets and make a profit with a £5 million pot raised from 50 investors. Information from sources about the bets being made each week suggests that Campbell and his team were wagering millions per month. Campbell’s own figures put the fund’s returns at 8.5 per cent per year between 2017 and 2023.What did it bet on?
The syndicate placed bets on top-flight football matches taking place in Germany, Spain, England and Italy. Usually it would bet on the outright result of the match and whether there would be more or fewer than 2.5 goals in a game. The fund used the Asian betting markets as they are more liquid than European firms and accept large bets in volume.
That’s actually an idiot betting method. At which point three options. He lost it, the bookies didn’t pay or we’re in Charlie and the postal coupons territory. Claiming 8.5% a year. Umm. What was Madoff claiming?
A sensible betting method – in volume, as here – is to play home and away odds. There’s a big home bias in betting. UK odds on England winning are often different, wildly, from NZ odds on NZ losing when England play NZ. For the bookies are stting their odds on the weight of money. And it’s possible to be – sorta – an anti-bookie and take the other side of that weight of money price difference.
But you do have to be a good bookie to be able to be an anti-bookie. Oh, and the bookies have to pay up of course.
And finally, the more people who do this the closer those home and away odds will become – weight of money, see – meaning that what definitely used to be true might either not be any longer or perhaps v narrow.
Gonna be fun to find out.
So one’s a slag and the other’s a spiv.? Better than being an evil cunt like their father.
Marius is right. They could have turned out far, far worse…
My heart bleeds rusty piss for all involved
Presumably if you sign up xquid for a betting syndicate somewhere in the small print it’ll mention that you agree your potential return is -xquid.
“The syndicate placed bets on top-flight football matches taking place in Germany, Spain, England and Italy.”
This is also a bad move. You don’t bet on “top flight”. The bookies have a ton of money riding on them, and analyse the absolute shit out of them.
You bet on the little stuff, the weird stuff that bookies aren’t paying much attention to and look for mistakes. Like the Intertoto Cup where you get Man City against some 2nd raters in Europe. Which sounds like a walkover, but Man City are not going to risk getting Rodri and Foden injured for tiny prize money in a dink summer tournament, so you get the Man City B team playing.
Should’ve got Horace Batchelor’s advice via the ouija board. (“Is there anybody there?” “K-E-Y-N…”)
When Betfair first introduced their Premium Charge there was much gnashing of teeth. The real pros shrugged their shoulders and got on with their high volume low margin strategies confident that they’d still come out on top.
They couldn’t care less about the outcome of an event, they just provide the liquidity enabling less serious players to get their bets matched at better odds than the high street or account firms and have some fun.
There is no home or away bias in football odds that comes from weight of money. There is a home bias calculated in to the chance of winning, amongst many other factors, but that’s different.
Any setimental weight of money that deviated the odds from the “true” modelled price would soon be traded out back to the true price.
The odds on football markets that are heavily traded such as match odds and over / under 2.5 are set by models competing against each other on the slight difference in prices that they each have churned out – and the patriotic money that you mention provides liquidity and mug money for the models to hoover up.
Plus there’s not a single bookie who prices above the exchange price on football – unless for promotion or temporary mistake, regardless of weight of money.
“There is no home or away bias in football odds that comes from weight of money.”
Really? If England are playing France at something and everyone in England bets in England, and everyone in France bets on France, are you saying the odds in each country will be the same?
OT
I read an article in The Critic without noting the author. About half way through I thought the style is very Tim Worstall and lo it was!
https://thecritic.co.uk/the-anti-growth-cabal/
Ouch. I’ve a style, have I?
However there is also the point that manufacturers have no incentive to standardise basic functions between their different brands, because they get to make more money if their add on is proprietary to them alone and everyone has to buy one from them. For example cordless power tools all have different battery pack designs. What fits a Makita won’t fit a Milwaukee, even though the basic battery is pretty much identical internally. The consumer would be far better served if all batteries had to fit all tools, there would be far less wastage, and they would have to spend less on buying new batteries and chargers all the time. And of course the manufacturers constantly change the design of the fitting so old batteries no longer fit the new versions, and vice versa, thus meaning if the old battery dies you have to throw away the tool because its useless without a power source. All done not to aid the consumer by providing a better product but purely to rook the consumer for more money.
Maybe the son should become an alcoholic author of pornographic literature. Worked for his dad..
Yes Jim
If it were a coin toss between England and France with England being heads and so all of your punters betting heads for england, in which case moving the odds from evens (2.0) to say 1/2 (1.5). The corresponding odds for tails in this hypothetical market would move to 2.5. The model says the true price of tails is 2.0 (as it is a coin toss this doesn’t take much modelling). Getting 2.5 odds on a 2.0 shot is a favourable bet and the money bet on tails would bring it back to the true price of 2.0.
Ouch. I’ve a style, have I?
Yes.
If you really are a winning gambler, absolutely the last thing you want to do is attract the attention of outside investors. The difficulty of getting on at the prices you want is the biggest stumbling block to making a living from betting.
But I can well believe that a lot of people who should know better wouldn’t be able to get their heads around that. My best friend has zero interest in gambling, but a few years ago, when I was moaning to him that I’d had all my accounts closed, and was limited to using the exchanges and out-of-town betting shops, he suggested opening accounts in his name.
Resisting the urge first to hug him and give him a great big kiss, I described how we would go about it and what he’d need to do, and offered him 10% of any net profits as his reward.
“So, how much would I need to put in?”
“No, no. Nothing at all. It will all be my money and my risk. You get 10% with no downside.”
“But if I put in my money, we would win more, wouldn’t we?”
“You can’t do that. By increasing the stakes, at best the account would be closed the moment we were in front. At worst we would get the extra stakes on just the losing bets – the ones where I’d got it wrong – but less than we wanted on the winning bets, where the bookmaker was wrong.”
Now my mate is a clever and educated man, but he just couldn’t get his head around this. The lure of £ signs flashing before his eyes was enough to overcome any logic. In the end I convinced him by pointing out that the fact I was resorting to this method of getting on was evidence that we needed to keep it small. My own closed accounts were proof of that.
Well, after a few months and a few bookies, all the new accounts had been closed, I was £29,000 up, and I said, okay, let’s leave it there. Here’s your £2,900. Bookmakers were getting far better at spotting ‘beard’ accounts, and were starting to close them arbitrarily and keep the stake money. There had even been a successful prosecution for fraud. Besides that, I’d gone through most of the long-established firms with whom you would be confident of getting paid, and I didn’t fancy moving on to the newcomers with terrible reputations.
Well, my friend was obviously happy with the risk-free £2,900, but not with what he saw as a premature end to our adventure. He mentioned the names of a few firms I hadn’t used. I explained why I didn’t trust them, but he wasn’t having it. “But they advertise on the television! They sponsor things! They’ve got amazing offers!”
Those £ signs again.
But he did eventually get his head around the idea that one of my ‘edges’ over the years is that I’ve never been knocked.
So, if you’re wondering how the great and the good could get sucked into putting money into a gambling venture promising 10%, at a time when they could get 5% in the building society, then that’s how: greed and ignorance, but mostly greed.
And one other thing: Jim (and Tim), it’s a globalized world now. There is no such thing as local odds for local punters any more.
@Paul, Somerset
I have never gambled and I can believe you – strange that others can’t.
re power tools, there is actually significant differentiation between batteries, at least when you get into commercial power tools. The batteries commercial tools use are astonishing, both in performance and in cost. Just for example, most of the companies now do a battery-powered LAWNMOWER. So there’s another benefit to them of making them proprietary: you’re not forced to compete with another manufacturer making a better battery for your tools, or undercutting your £100-150 price point.
Again, speaking only for the commercial segment, there is at least one bright side: the batteries became smart, which means they can now deliver fractions of their nominal voltage without discharging unevenly and damaging themselves, so there’s no-longer a need for separate lines of 12V, 24V and so-on batteries (and if you need *more* volts, you can put them in series without damaging them). So this does at least mean that once you’re on Team Green, Team Red or Team Yellow, you can have a small fleet of identical batteries that power everything, and not have to worry about odd-man-out tools that need their own special battery, or worry that your manufacturer will change the connector on you.
Aside, there are companies that make battery adapters, so the lock-in is not absolute. I’ve not personally used one, but I imagine that as long as all you’re doing is draining the battery, it’s a simple matter of making sure the connections are sound enough to handle the current.
David, that’s the difference between me explaining to you now how I went about making a modest profit from my betting, and young Campbell talking to ultra-confident media personalities and wanting to get his hands on their money.
A couple of Tweets from a few days ago on what might have been going on here (just to emphasize, I have no idea of how true they might be):
Kelvin MacKenzie
@kelvmackenzie
·
9h
I’m told Alastair Campbell’s son Rory, 37, has not hung around to explain where his gambling syndicate’s £5million has gone but is lying low in Portugal and playing the mental health card. Are his parents in touch with him? There are people who would like to know.
Kelvin MacKenzie
@kelvmackenzie
·
12h
From what I hear that missing £5million involving Alastair Campbell’s son will turn out to be a major scandal with many investors being biggies in the racing business, including executives and TV presenters. Did they know some of the money went into illegal Asian betting
I’d imagine that he just fucked up and lost the money, in that his “mathematical models” didn’t actually work, do what he intended, or GIGO.
From the short description given, it looks like Leverkusen winning the Bundesliga last season could have produced some severe pain. So, each week across 4 major leagues gives 80 games to bet on, with the season length being about 9 months, then generating 8% pa on 5 bar seems to require some fairly hefty bets, and I guess that could go very badly wrong disturbingly quickly.
It’s not rocket science. If you want to make money from betting on the results of football matches, become a book maker and build the book with an over-round greater than 100% so no matter what the result you pay out less than you take in. Apparently for football matches it’s typically 112% and even higher for unpopular European fixtures.
If you start a business is betting against the bookmakers you need to accept that they will still take their 12% advantage so you are fighting the regular punters for the remaining 88%.
On batteries, connectors etc…
There is an innovation phase when no one knows what really works best and everyone has there own way. Then a consolidation where alliances are formed, finally a commodity stage of using the readily available parts the same as everyone else. The final stage may not be optimal, thus forcing the pace of standardisation is sub-optimal. but that’s what the EU does best
“If it were a coin toss between England and France with England being heads and so all of your punters betting heads for england, in which case moving the odds from evens (2.0) to say 1/2 (1.5). The corresponding odds for tails in this hypothetical market would move to 2.5. The model says the true price of tails is 2.0 (as it is a coin toss this doesn’t take much modelling). Getting 2.5 odds on a 2.0 shot is a favourable bet and the money bet on tails would bring it back to the true price of 2.0.”
Thats all very well if you know the true odds of the result, such as when tossing a coin. But in a sporting event no-one does know beforehand what the true odds of who is going to win are, because you can’t run the same sporting event with the same participants over and over again to see who wins at what frequency, like you can do with a coin toss. So there is never a divergence of the actual odds from the true odds, because its just what peoples opinions of the true odds are, and those are created by flows of money, ie putting their money where their mouths are.
If weight of money doesn’t shift odds, why do bookmakers on race courses change the odds over time as varying amounts of money are placed on the horses in the race? If a load of money is suddenly placed on a horse, its odds will tumble. Why is that? According to you its true odds of winning haven’t altered so why would he change his odds?
Jim
Odds, probability, chance and expectation may be next to each other in the thesaurus but they are not the same thing.
The favourite doesn’t always win but it wins more often than the outsider. Some pro punters bet on favourites, and collect many small gains.
Asian betting syndicates nobble the competition. See Pak and S Africa cricket. to get their edge.
If Cambell was using Asian bookies to place his bets he’s a mug of the first water. Having been burnt, they will do anything to avoid paying out on a regular basis.
An example
Trump’s chances of winning were about 50 :50 according to polls.
so the odds offered should have been about 13:7
in fact the bookies offered much less
balancing the books
the betting crowd were more accurate than the pollster crowd. The odds shortened even more as election day approached and yet still a ton of money went on Trump despite the meagre expected pay out.
And still the uncertaincy remained. Biden or Harris could have strung out a coherent sentence, Trump might have been shot…
“The favourite doesn’t always win but it wins more often than the outsider. Some pro punters bet on favourites, and collect many small gains.”
Until the odds on favourite loses (by chance or by being nobbled) and then they lose all the pennies they’ve picked up in front of the steam roller. How many people bet on Mike Tyson to beat Buster Douglas? A no brainer, obviously, the baddest man on the planet, unbeaten world champion vs some journeyman bum. Only the bum won, at 42-1. Pro punter 0, steam roller 1.
Ouch. I’ve a style, have I?
It’s stumbling over the broken verb clauses that is the distinctive marker. 😉
I’m not sure the USB-C standard is nothing more than IEC “kettle plug” for low-power devices. Everything having an IEC connector hasn’t stifled electrical appliance innovation, and market network effects ensures it’s near universal. The major difference is that IEC connecto r is not mandated by law, but is an design standard. Other than the brief nonsense of Part P, the IEEE have managed to keep government out of their business.
I used to go to a conference where this guy was a speaker. He claims that there is a ‘weight of money’ effect, at least on major US sports: Yankees or Dodgers attract so much money that the lines diverge from the true odds becasue the bookies have to to balance their books. I don’t gamble, and am not familiar enoiugh with the terminology to follow the details of what he was saying – but it was more entertaining than yet another seminar on cost estimating or drug approvals.
Anyway, he set up gambling syndicates, but an oder of magnitude smaller than Campbell – IIRC he was capitalized at $500K USD (the article refers to a $1,000 stake, but he had expanded from there). The expansion has also reduced his returns – IIRC he was talking about 15 – 20% annually. He has also grown into other sports – the last time I attended he commented that since hockey was less followed by professional gamblers there were more mis-priced bets avaialble.
I don’t even know what that means…..
@Chris
I always thought that Horace Batchelor’s Infradraw method sounded like a form of contraception that carried the Pope’s stamp of approval.
Betting and losing money? This is the story of the year. I actually think it could be a piece of satire with Alistair behind the scenes. The punchline is surely the ‘investors’ wanting their money back. Presumably to spend on lollies and vapes.