Tote Ireland pools its lot with British bookie Ladbrokes

THE STATE-OWNED betting pool operator, Tote Ireland, is set to join forces with British bookie Ladbrokes from today.

Ladbrokes will offer customers the opportunity to bet into Irish Tote pools at domestic race meetings.

The deal, aimed at boosting the size of the Tote's pools and the bookmaker's turnover, will mean that Ladbroke customers will be able to place win and place bets at Tote payout dividends on Irish races.

It will also allow them to bet on the Irish and UK jackpots, bets that involve picking the winners of four consecutive races at each meeting, and placepots, bets that involve picking placed horses in six consecutive races.

Ladbrokes will also offer the Scoop 6, a popular jackpot-style bet in Britain, which involves picking the winners of six televised races at different English meetings on Saturday afternoons, and during high profile meetings such as Cheltenham and Royal Ascot.

The Scoop 6 jackpot regularly features six-figure payouts to winning bets.

Ladbrokes yesterday said that the "small-stake, big-payout bets" such as these are expected to be very popular with the high-street punters who use its shops.

The company's chief executive Joe Lewins said yesterday that making large pools of money available to small staking customers was core to its strategy.

Welcoming the deal yesterday, Tote Ireland chief executive, Alexis Murphy, predicted that there would be particular interest in big placepot and jackpot pools at Irish and British race meetings, particularly as there are often guaranteed jackpot funds, as will be the case at the forthcoming Galway festival.

State body, Horse Racing Ireland, owns the tote. The tote is a betting pool used to fund horseracing.

The company takes a share of each pool to cover its costs and to ensure a profit, and pays out on winning bets with the remainder.

Last year, Ladbrokes's Irish operations made €26 million in profits, an increase of 40 per cent on 2006.

The company recently bought Barney Eastwood's 54 shops in Northern Ireland in a deal valued at €181 million.