Betting with Bill

In a luxurious London flat one morning last week, stocky William Hill, 60, puffed a delicious Havana and thumbed his Financial Times. Then he took his coat from the butler, stepped out to his chauffeur-driven Rolls-Royce, and rode off for a spot of shooting at Harrow before he showed up banker-late at his office. Bill Hill is every inch a proper British tycoon. Commanding an empire with an annual turnover of $126 million and 2,000,000 enthusiastic clients, he is the world's biggest bookie.

Coupons & Computers. While voters in New York City voted only last week to set up a committee to consider legalizing off-track betting, Britain has had long experience with the idea. Wagers on horse races, dog races and football (i.e., soccer) matches are aboveboard in Britain and add up to a $3 billion annual bet. Hill is a profit-making pragmatist: "Modern bookmaking is merely a question of buying and selling money. It's a business like a bank or an in surance company."

Risk Capitalist Hill owns more than 50% of the stock in Holders Investment Trust, Ltd., whose shares are listed on London's stock exchange and have raced from 28-c- each in 1955 to $28 now. Holders has three separate betting companies and 3,000 employees. Telephone networks link them with Hill's agents at all the major tracks and stadiums, and a computer processes client accounts and prints checks. Hill has special training courses for his "settlers," the clerks assigned to sort out the winners, who theoretically can hit up to 24,000,000 to 1 in football for picking the precise scores of ten matches. (The longest shot Hill has ever paid was 3,960,000 to 1 on a bet of threepence.)

Every week in the eight-month football season, Hill sends out more than 900,000 coupons to his clients, who are color-coded in his files according to where they live. Their selections are mailed back with postal money orders, to the delight of Her Majesty's post office. A blue-chip list of 100,000 clients also enjoys instant credit, ranging up to unlimited amounts for those whom Hill calls "oil tycoons, potentates and people like that." Luckily his bad debts run to less than 1%, for gaming debts are legally uncollectible. Hill's company averages a 5% profit on most types of bets, last year earned $1,300,000.

Helped by a Law. Hill's eight-story palace of percentages is a long shot up from his beginnings in Birmingham, where he was one of ten children of a car painter. He left school at twelve to work for a farmer and soon made-and lost--his first bet on a horse. He became a bookmaker in his teens, eventually moved to London. Only bookmaking on credit was legal then; Hill built a clientele among the upper classes with solid credit ratings. His fast breakaway came three years ago when Parliament passed a Betting and Gaming Act, which outlawed bookmaking in the streets and was designed to reduce betting. But the act actually encouraged it by authorizing wagering for cash and off-track "betting offices"--15,000 of which have since opened in Britain. "I warned them then," says Hill. "Now even housewives are getting the habit."

Not all is gravy, even for a bookie. There is constant danger of big hits; jubilant Hill bettors collected a record $3,600,000 in a single day last year.

There is competition from smaller bookmakers like Ladbroke's (whose clients include the royal family) and from football pools. The pools, playing it safer, give winners only a cut of all the money collected, but the "fixed odds" bookmakers such as Hill set their odds in advance, and sometimes lose more than they take in. Last season terrible weather ("all that bloody ice and snow") ruined odds, postponed football matches, cost Hill a loss of $1,600,000 on his football business. "Fixed odds is a very risky business," says Hill.

Stud Poker. Hill intends to fight such adversity with diversity. He has branched into a blouse manufacturing firm, and a fortnight ago joined other millionaires, including Industrialist Charles Clore, in something of a stud poker game: they are starting a cattle-breeding service with a number of Friesian bulls. But despite the fact that gambling built his own fortune of $30 million, Hill has not placed a bet for nearly ten years. He figures that he would not get a kick out of it if he won, and would be very annoyed if he lost. He has even become slightly moralistic about wagering. He advises Englishmen: "Don't bet. But if you have to, bet with William Hill."

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