Tuesday, May 31, 2011

Bookies place their money on rainfall

Manish Pachouly, Hindustan Times
Mumbai, May 30, 2011

With the IPL-4 season having drawn to a close, bookies across the city have moved on to their next target: rainfall. On Sunday, the city’s bookies opened rates for the amount of rainfall Mumbai would witness from June to September, with every millimetre of rainfall expected to fetch more than Rs1.5 crore.

Bookies expect a business of approximately Rs3,500 crore this monsoon and predict that the city would witness a seasonal rainfall of around 2,100-mm.

In a first, bookies have opened seasonal rainfall (the total rainfall from June to September) rates for not just Colaba, but also Santacruz.

Bookies have also opened rates for monthly rainfall (in individual months, beginning June and ending September) in Colaba. “In case of Santacruz, we have only opened seasonal rainfall rates and not monthly, as this is the first time we have placed bets for rains expected in the suburbs. Depending on the response, we will decide if we should open monthly rainfall rates in Santacruz from next season,” said a bookie on condition of anonymity.

Sources said that bookies from Delhi, Indore, Ahmedabad, Guwahati, Jaipur and Kolkata had come to Mumbai to open rates for rainfall in the city.

“Bets not only come from Mumbai or from within the country, but even from Dubai, Sharjah and Pakistan,” said the bookie.

He added that most high-profile bookies have internet-enabled mobile phones and they update themselves on the rainfall figures released by the weather bureau everyday, even while travelling across the city.

Bookies expect the monsoon to arrive in Mumbai between June 11 and June 13. “Experts in opening rates for Mumbai rains are keeping a track on when the monsoon arrives in Andaman and Nicobar, and Kerala,” the bookie said. “After the monsoon arrives, the rates would be updated depending on the rainfall the city receives,” he added.

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