Leaders’ Debate Novelty Bets

The general election is just around the corner now and it’s hard to turn on the TV without one party or another telling you that voting for the other guy is tantamount to giving a thumbs up to the apocalypse. It can all get a bit nauseating regardless of which political party you support, so the prospect of a debate featuring all of the leaders will alternate between a nightmare and a snoozefest for some. It’s no surprise then that aside from the more serious ‘Who won the debate?‘ (UKIP’s Nigel Farage 7/4, Conservative David Cameron 7/2, Labour’s Ed Miliband 4/1, SNP leader Nicola Sturgeon 9/1, Liberal Democrat Nick Clegg 12/1) markets there are a whole host of novelty style bets available.

Coral offer odds for ‘All Men To Wear Party Coloured Ties‘ and there’s a rather humorous ‘Worst Performance‘ betting market offered by various bookmakers. Green party leader Natalie Bennett is favourite for that following her car crash LBC interview. The bets most fitting of the ‘novelty bet’ tag are the bingo style ‘To say first‘ and ‘to say at any time‘ markets. Paddy Power is the only bookmaker offering the ‘To say first‘ bets, but I’d leave those well alone as for a phase to be said at all isn’t a given let alone by a specific party leader out of seven.

The ‘To say at any time‘ market looks to be much more interesting though. The debate is two hours long. That’s an often lot of time for individual phrases to be uttered by someone. While there are silly phrases such as “Zayn Malik” at 25/1, odds of 11/10 that someone will say the phrase “hard working families” seems pretty decent to me.

Selection: “Hard working families” to be mentioned during debate 11/10  Tipster: GC