Record £76.5m traded on Smarkets for Grand National

Saturday’s Grand National saw the single-event trading volume record broken on the Smarkets betting exchange.

A total of £76.5m was traded across the famous race’s ante-post, winner, and place markets, with the bulk (£62.1m) changing hands on the main winner market.

The 2019 total represents a 33% increase on 2018 (£57.4m) and comes after Smarkets broke several company records during the recent Cheltenham Festival, including a 20% increase on concurrent logged-in users.

This year’s Grand National was won by Tiger Roll, who became the first horse since the legendary Red Rum in 1974 to win the race in successive years. Gordon Elliott’s superstar was the clear favourite in the build-up but was available to back at a top price of 7.0 (14.3%) on Smarkets around midday on Saturday.

The total overround on the Smarkets winner market for the National was around 103% shortly before the race started, compared to 163% for the official Industry Starting Price (SP) that has been reported today.

Smarkets CEO Jason Trost said:

“First of all, I’d like to congratulate the whole team at Smarkets for another hugely successful Grand National. 2019 has started fantastically for us and to see over £76m traded on a single event is absolutely incredible.

“It’s clear that more and more people recognise how strong our platform is compared to the competition when it comes to usability and price – the overround from our exchange was much closer to 100% and therefore a lot fairer than what you got with the bookies.

“Next we’ve got the Champions League quarter-finals and Masters golf this week, as well as all the madness surrounding Brexit, so it really is an exciting and busy time on our exchange.”