William Hill's blushes saved by mug punters

The bookie says it is making progress, but if that’s the case why can’t it find a CEO?

William Hill got a boost from England’s mug punters (Reuters)

Desperately in need of a pick me up, William Hill got one, from the mug punters who insist on betting on the England football team.

Last year’s Cheltenham Festival was a bit of a disaster, but the Euro 2016 football tournament turned the tide (a bit) and allowed the company to report some semi-respectable earnings after profit warnings had been issued so no one was expecting too much.

England football fans, eh. Despite the fact that the side always, but always, disappoints at major tournaments, people buy the shirts, watch them on TV, and make a noise (and sadly sometimes a mess) wherever they’re playing. And however they’re playing.

They also put down their money with their bookies in the hopes that this time it will be different. Even though it never is.

For those bookies, it’s the gift that keeps on giving, and helped William Hill to report pre tax profits of £225.6m for 2016. They were every so slightly ahead of the City’s reduced expectations.

The company could do with some more gifts like that this year, however. Thistlecrack’s removal from the Cheltenham Festival, which will have generated a nice ante post profit, is a start, but it’ll require more than that to repeat the trick.

Hills is still without a chief executive. The incumbent acting chief executive Philip Bowcock, who previously served as finance director, says he’s made strategic and leadership changes that “continue to bear fruit” with “strong indications that online is returning to sustained growth”.

The gambling industry’s best executives, however, aren’t buying it. Having dragged its feet over ousting James Henderson, under whose tenure Britain’s leading bookie became a laggard, the William Hill board has failed to convince any of them to step into the breach.

If Hill’s looked like a good bet, you can be sure someone would have put their money on it by now. And yet it is Mr Bowcock, a man with scant experience of the industry who had previously served as finance director of Cineworld, that now has a favourite’s chance of winning the top job on a permanent basis.

The bookie’s biggest shareholders are reported to be unhappy at this turn of events. They might want to shift their focus to ensuring that the board has a strong enough team of non executive directors in place to take the necessary action if Mr Bowcock fails to prove everyone wrong. It doesn’t appear that there are any obvious alternatives to him right now.

It bears repeating that while this company is making money, the regulatory noose is tightening and the tax bills are rising, notwithstanding its other problems.

If you’re reduced to relying on England’s legion of mug punters to look respectable, you’ve become a mug bookie. That’s not a happy place to be when the going report reads “heavy”.