THE most interesting betting story of 2025 was a simple one: Dylan Phelan and his each-way double on a pair of Delcan Queally-trained horses with Ladbrokes where the bookmaker delayed paying out despite it seeming a straightforward case of ‘you lay, you pay.’
There were some more nuanced aspects to the case, however, particularly with the issue of maximum payouts. Phelan was due over €319,000 on the bet, but only received €100,000, as the docket hit the ceiling figure for the grade of race, though one did wonder if Ladbrokes were playing the man rather than the ball here.
This was hardly a normal bet, as it came from a punter with links to a gambling yard, Declan Queally commenting in this paper back in February that ‘we won’t put them [the bookmakers] out of business, but we’ll keep them on their toes’, the two horses in question shortening markedly from the 80/1 and 125/1 the bet was struck at into starting prices of 22/1 and 16/1.
If a standard punter landing on a fortunate multiple with a series of winning big-priced selections breached the same payout limits, would the same letter of the terms and conditions have applied?
I am not sure, and one could even argue that such successful bets hitting now and then are good advertising for the betting companies. They must sell the dream to some degree.
It is worth considering these limits and how they differ from firm to firm. I had a look in a few shops around my area along with the major online sites and their different maximum payouts in this table.
Some obvious points stand out. Bigger firms have bigger limits; I looked in more regional-based bookmakers like Toals, The Track and Hughes and their upper end maximum payouts were €250,000, €100,000 and €100,000 in that order. I also visited Bar One Racing locally and an upper limit maximum of €1 million was displayed though the figures are lower on their website. As the quality of racing goes down, so too does the maximum payout, though not with Bet365 who have a uniform figure of £1 million in the UK and Ireland when an industry SP is declared.
Better racing
It is interesting to consider how the different firms apply different rules to the UK and Ireland. All seem to be happy to have higher limits on the better racing in the UK and Ireland, but it is not as simple as that.
Looking at the calendar year 2024, Class 1 and 2 races made up 11.5% of the entire racing programme in the UK, that figure rising to 48.7% if including Class 3 and 4 races.
In Ireland in 2024, graded, group and listed races made up 6.2% of all races, the figure rising to 8.8% if including the premier handicaps.
A much smaller proportion of Irish racing reaches the higher maximum payouts, and readers can draw their own conclusions about why that might be. I also wonder what might happen if a punter lands a successful multiple bet that mixes races across the grades – what maximum payouts are then applied?
Payout limits
I asked Anthony Kaminskas of AK Bets about this recently in a Twitter Ask Me Anything and his response was that ‘payout limits on Irish racing are massive…I wouldn’t want to lay bets to lose €100,000 in these [low-grade] races…the same applies in England given the standard of racing and the prize money available…€100,000 is very fair.’
Getting close to these maximum payouts is extremely difficult with single bets, and anyone that has had a betting account restricted might laugh at the thought, but I am thinking more of multiples here and it is not really that hard to start hitting the €100,000 figures.
A punter having an accumulator with four 12/1 shots for a fiver stake is due €142,800 back but with a 100,000 limit, they would have same return for a 3.50 stake, the final 1.50 of their bet being redundant as it could not win.
There is something unfair about that and while bookmakers might complain that such an issue cannot be resolved easily, the one thing we know about these companies is that they are excellent at tech if it is needed, almost all of them having things like complex bet builders included in their sites now. Those products return big margins, over-staked multiples the opposite.
Do their homework
The counterargument is that this is a case of caveat emptor and punters need to do their homework. Many punters might want the place part of elaborate each-way multiple bets and be less bothered about the win, while adding hassle to betting shop experience is another downside.
If a member of betting shop staff must manually check every ambitious accumulator for fear of breaching limits rather than just putting it through the till, then friction would be increased.
Perhaps a greater degree of automation in shops is the way to go – that betting slips still being hand-written is bizarre if one thinks about it – though I suspect plenty of sharper punters are quite happy with the current setup and would like it to last as long as possible.
THE current period of warm weather has been excellent for tracks in getting racegoers through the door but comes with challenges in preparing the racing surface, particularly for courses that host meetings with multiple days and National Hunt cards.
Whatever the rights and wrongs of watering, the modern approach means that fixtures that have more than one day and begin with a jumps cards will have applied plenty of moisture as it becomes difficult to water when racing is going on.
That looked to be the case at Killarney last Sunday as the riders were coming back with mud-splattered silks and as can happen with watered tracks, a bias emerged, in this case towards the outside on the hurdle track, becoming more powerful as the day went on to the point that it was result-defining in the later races.
The race that revealed this first was the listed hurdle for mares where Royal Hollow looked to have the race won after two out, but she finished up going down the inner and Stormalong, who was outpaced leaving the back straight, was able to rally out wide.
Best mare
Royal Hollow looked the best mare here and may have paid for setting a strong pace too, the time much the fastest of the four hurdle races over that trip on the card, while going back right-handed should suit as she adjusted that way.
J.J. Slevin and Batman Girac won the good handicap hurdle, though it was more J.J., as he came very wide in the straight, nearly out on the chase track, to win, the runner-up also charting a wide route.
The two Gavin Cromwell-trained horses that finished third and fourth, Come On The Lads and Stuntman Steve, raced much more down the inner, while the former was coming off a 76-day absence too.
In the closing bumper, the finish was dominated by two well-backed runners that raced wide, their riders wise to the better ground, but both Power Of Words and Coolnav, sixth and seventh respectively, went well for a long way on the unfavoured inner.