Donald Trump bashes Paddy Power, but bookie could have last laugh

Donald Trump is bookmaker Kryptonite right now. That might be the only reason to cheer the election of the orange one.

Paddy Power Betfair has revealed that his election cost the company £5m. Nearly £1m of that hit was taken through paying out on Hillary Clinton early. Oops.

A small army of small punters who bet on the The Donald to win – augmented by one or two big ones – were responsible for the rest.

Numbers like that will warm the cockles of any gambler’s heart, even those who (like myself) find just about everything else about America’s new President horrifying.

Trump was just one of the customer-friendly outcomes that the company had to deal with last year. Including sports results, they reduced 2016 profits by around £40m. But it didn't go all the way of the punter. The mega-bookie still expects to report underlying profits within a range of £390m-£405m.

And it may have the last laugh over Trump too.

For a start he has delivered a shot in the arm to political betting markets. In the past these have been squirrelled away under the “novelty” heading. Trump has pushed them into the mainstream. Betting on Brexit set new records. Trump went and doubled them. Turnover was huge, I tell you, huge. And that’s not fake news.

The interest generated by events in the US is also drawing in lots of people for whom sports betting doesn’t do it.

The reason why Trump may ultimately work against them, and in the bookmakers' favour, is that he inspires such visceral reactions – on both sides – that he encourages people to bet with their guts. Therein, as any successful punter will tell you, lies the road to ruin.

The latest gambling excitement has been created by Paddy Power's impeachment betting markets, which, as I reported last week, have seen a flood of money backing the President to find himself in a heap of trouble. The punters' favourite is for impeachment to happen within six months.

That's where Paddy Power Betfair looks set to be onto a winner.

Having gone from 8-1 to 4-1 at the end of last week, the odds on impeachment within six months were clipped again over the weekend and now stand at 3-1.

Such an occurrence would be a thing of beauty for those of us who oppose the man and all his works.

Trouble is, Trump has a Republican-controlled Congress and a Republican-controlled Senate to work with. While relations between the President and his party have been uneasy, it’s still hard to see those turkeys voting for Christmas even with a new scandal appearing to break every week, and even if they would find Vice President Mike Pence a far more amenable occupant of the Oval Office. Trump’s supporters would crucify them.

The hurdles to clear before impeaching a President are very high, with a majority of the Republican House of Representatives having to vote in favour as just your starter for 10.

The 7-4 the bookie is offering on Trump not to complete his first term is a better bet for the savvy punter (it allows for resignation), but it's still a fact that a President has only once failed to see out their term without being assassinated – that was Richard Nixon, who resigned.

None of that has stopped the money from rolling into Paddy Power's coffers, and given how unpredictable events are right now, anything could happen. I’ve been wrong before, after all, and I'm hardly alone in that.