Can You Bet On Anything You Want To?

There’s an old saying about the betting industry: if you can think about it then you can bet on it.

Whilst that isn’t technically true, there are a wide range of things that you can place wagers on and the list extends to anything, as long as a bookmaker thinks that there’s a market. The event in question must have a definitive outcome and be a public event.

In the modern era the vast majority of bookmakers have chosen to decline the requests of customers wishing to bet on something unsavoury, such as the assassination of a president or the next celebrity to die.

As long as it isn’t morally questionable, though, there’s a good chance that a bookmaker will be willing to give you odds on the outcome of something.

If you are interested in this type of thing also check out our page on bizarre things you can bet on.

Request Your Own Bets

There are very few rules in place when it comes to what a bookmaker can and cannot take bets on. Most of the markets that are offered by fixed-odds bookies are on specific markets that can be easily identified; usually in the region of sports outcomes or the winner of an entertainment award. The invention of the request-a-bet feature has changed all of that, however.

The vast majority of major bookmakers allow punters to get in touch with them and request odds on a specific thing. This has been going on ever since bookies have existed, however, in the past this was complicated by needing to go into a bookie shop or by contacting one of the big bookies over the phone.

These days this has all changed with pretty much all the major brands offering the ability to quickly request bets. Often this will be via social media, but you can also do so over the phone or in person if they’re a company that boasts both an online operation and physical shops. The majority of people use such a service to request unusual outcomes of events already marked up.

A good example of this is with a football match. Someone could send a tweet to their favourite bookie asking for odds on Liverpool to beat Manchester City 4-1, with five or more yellow cards shown, thirteen or more corners and twenty fouls or over. The bookmaker will then look at the odds on that bet and provide them to the punter, who can decide whether to place the bet or not.

The same service can be used to ask for odds on something that you think will happen, however. There is no guarantee that a bookmaker will provide odds to you, but there’s no harm in asking. The bookies’ decision will ultimately depend on what it is that you’re asking and whether the outcome can be both definitive and verified by independent experts.

Betting On Kids Being Successful

Whilst a bookmaker won’t give you odds on which fly takes off first from a pair of them that are on your windowsill, they will be quick to look up odds on a whole host of markets if you want to bet on them. This can vary from the mundane to the marvellous, with the likes of election betting fitting into the former category and the end of the world being in the latter.

Obviously there are question marks around the idea of why exactly you’d want to bet on the end of the world considering the fact that you wouldn’t be able to collect your winnings, but if you want to do so then bookmakers won’t be shy in allowing you to. A more common bet is for a child to become something of a prodigy, which is a bet we’ve seen numerous times over the years as more people have started to bet on their kids.

One of the most famous examples of such a bet came in 1995 when Eddie Kirkland and friends of the Kirkland family placed a bet on Eddie’s son Chris playing for England one day. When Chris Kirkland won his first international cap in 2006, Eddie and his friends walked away with a decent pot of prize money to share between them.

Bookmakers aren’t stupid, of course. If you wish to place a bet on a child becoming successful at something then they’ll do a whole heap of research before they give you odds. It’s why a bet on 9-year-old Lewis Hamilton winning a Formula 1 Grand Prix before he turned 23 only garnered odds of 40/1 from Ladbrokes.

Whilst those sorts of bets can cost bookies a huge sum of money, the stories we don’t hear about are the bets placed by parents whose children go on to do nothing quite as spectacular. Had Curtis Robb’s father placed a bet on him making it to the Olympics at some point then he’d have won some money, but instead his 1989 wager was on his son winning an Olympic medal and ended up being a losing one.

Other Example Bets

There are a wide range of examples of interesting bets that people have placed over the years.

Whilst at university, Justin Tomlinson and Chris Kelly placed bets on themselves becoming Prime Minister before 2038.

They were offered odds of 10,000/1, meaning that they stand to make £500,000 if it happens. They’re already Conservative party MPs.