Donald Trump earns early bettors big payoff, sticks it to bookmakers

A few fortunate political punters cashed in last week after Donald Trump defied the odds to win the White House, creating a big payday for the ones who backed the billionaire businessman in early betting.

Meanwhile, one bookie said it had to make the biggest political payout in its history after it called the race for Democrat Hillary Clinton last month and was sent reeling when voters didn’t cooperate.

“It’s always good to be right,” said Jimmy Wagner, a New York lawyer who will collect more than $5,000 on Mr. Trump’s win.

He said, however, that the political market PredictIt isn’t paying up until after the Electoral College makes Mr. Trump’s election official next month.

Mr. Trump started out a 100-1 long shot in the summer of 2015, shooting from the lip in attacks on Mexicans and questioning whether Sen. John McCain’s time as a prisoner of war made him a hero. But a curious thing happened: As the supposed gaffes piled up, his odds of winning improved.

The odds fluctuated during the general election showdown with Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton. During the presidential debates, when Mrs. Clinton had a strong go of it, her standing rose.

But FBI Director James B. Comey’s late-October letter saying he had renewed his investigation into Mrs. Clinton’s exclusive use of a private email server during her tenure as secretary of state boosted Mr. Trump again.

Still, the Republican real estate mogul was a decided underdog throughout.

Paddy Power, an Irish bookmaker, was so confident in a Clinton victory that it announced in October it would start paying out more than $1 million to people who had put their money on the former first lady to win.

Now, it’s on the hook for more than $5 million in payouts, including a single lump sum of $100,000 to the biggest winner.

“Some very expensive egg on our faces,” said spokesman Lewis Davey.

Undeterred, the bookmaker already is offering odds for potentially significant events during a Trump presidency.

It gave him 4-1 odds to win re-election, 6-4 odds to appear in court at some point during his presidency, 10-1 odds to be impeached and 20-1 odds to build the U.S.-Mexico border wall he promised during the campaign.

Mr. Wagner, the lawyer who won $5,000 on his Trump bet, said the odds during the campaign seemed off to him. For all the hand-wringing now over the polls, surveys showed the race was within the margin of error, even as oddsmakers were offering 10-to-1 or higher.

“You had polls all within the margin of error and you had The New York Times in the morning still predicting a 90 percent, 95 percent chance for her to win,” he said. “It just didn’t coincide.”

He said people overvalued Mrs. Clinton’s chances because they wanted her to win, just as he sometimes overvalues New York Jets players in fantasy football because he’s a fan of the team.

“If you were somebody who was just on the outside looking at this strictly on the numbers even if she had won, you were still able to get into that market and still make a lot of money,” he said.

Betfair, a British bookmaking site, reported that $250 million was traded on the presidential market — including $93 million after the polls closed Tuesday. The biggest individual payday, for someone who backed Mr. Trump during the primaries, was $2.5 million.

The previous record for Betfair was the $159 million set by the “Brexit” market in June. Some have likened Mr. Trump’s shocking win to the United Kingdom’s vote this summer to exit the European Union, as many of the public opinion polls leading up to the vote showed more people choosing “remain.”

Betfair spokesman Barry Orr said some bettors might have been happy to back an outsider with Brexit still fresh in their minds.

“However, it appears that the opposite was true,” he said. “The market simply could not accept that the status quo could be wrong again.”