On 3 November Americans will go to vote for their next president, a position that is often mentioned as the most powerful one in the world. That alone is enough to draw massive attention to the event, as it influences power structures across the rest of the world. Add then a media magnet like President Donald J. Trump and a spreading human rights movement like Black Lives Matter, and you have an election that will dominate the media landscape through the autumn.
Interest in political betting is growing
We have been offering political odds markets since the early 2000s and it is an area of betting that’s growing. The 2016 US election was our biggest political betting event due to its global appeal compared to local elections, where we have seen solid growth election on election. The 2016 US election was about the same size as an average match during the 2016 EUROs, and bigger than the Europa League Final that same year.
We have clear indications that the 2020 election will be a new all-time high for our non-sport segment, as we have already taken slightly over 2.5 times the turnover on the primaries compared to the last election. That is with only the democratic nominee being of actual interest this time, as Trump is running for a second term for the republicans.
Unique insights from our customers' behaviour set the bets
In comparison to most political experts, we are willing to put actual odds on the outcome of the election and can provide insight into how the chances for outcomes have changed over time. This helps make the discussions much more tangible and put the probabilities into perspective for the wider public.
Our odds are mainly built upon the opinion polls, as they are the most reliable information for the outcome of the election. Additional adjustments are based on incoming bets, historical elections, statements from experts and other news in the media. How much each part affects odds and lines are difficult to say - it is an assessment our expert needs to do for each unique case. It is especially the incoming bets part that sets us apart from other experts trying to predict the outcome, as we get unique insights from our customers' behaviour, that others won’t be able to obtain.
What can you bet on?
We are offering bets on all the main outcomes like “winning candidate”, “winning party”, “popular vote”, “Electoral College Votes” and “State winner” for all 50 states. Most offers will also be live during the election night! We are not limited to the before-mentioned offers and are constantly looking to expand our offering with bets of interest to our customers, as they like to get the odds for something to happen. This is usually correlated with the news stream and can be anything from “Biden to get more votes than Obama in 2012” to “Trump to wear a star-spangled tie for the first presidential debate”.
We are very excited about the upcoming election from both a PR perspective to show what we can contribute to and from a betting perspective, where we enjoy breaking records as a company. This election will surely be a new record-breaker for a non-sport event.
