Sport is made for betting

It's the age-old problem of business. If you're not prepared to give credit, then your business can't grow. But who is a good risk and who is a bad one? This guy was a massive punter, but it's not the gambling which has sent him to the wall, those debts are relatively minor compared to his others. Former Billabong chief leaves trail of gambling debts The bookies involved are big enough to absorb the loss, but like any chunky bad debt, it will hurt their profits. Never get in too deep, otherwise the house of cards can come crashing down....

That can't be good to hear when you've pumped £5 billion into a business. "Gala Coral was formed by a merger between Gala and Coral Eurobet in 2005, but its component parts have been through a series of private equity owners in the past decade. The company has £4.4 billion of debt, including shareholder loans of £1.6 billion, but is operating within its banking covenants." "Gala Coral, which employs 19,000 people and operates 1,566 Coral betting shops, 165 bingo halls and 31 casinos, has struggled since the double whammy in 2007 of the smoking ban and the scrapping of lucrative high-payout gaming machines." Read the Times article here . The betting shop real estate is probably the most valuable thing in the portfolio so it's not as if the bookie itself will go bust. If push came to shove, someone would buy it. But when a corporation is over four billion pounds in debt, things can go pear-shaped very quickly...