THE World Cup finals could generate £100 million of bets for William Hill, the bookmaker, this summer, the company predicted yesterday, double the amount generated during the last tournament four years ago.

Tom Singer, its chief operating officer, said that betting on football had increased significantly since the last World Cup, while the company recently had expanded by acquiring Stanley Leisure’s betting shops for £504 million.

However, he said that the profitability of the tournament would depend on the results. “We’re bound to see a wall of patriotic money on England to win, although it wouldn’t be a disaster for us if England did win, as most of the betting is match to match rather than on the ultimate winner,” he said.

Shares of William Hill added 22½p to 558p after a trading update in which it said that it expected to beat profit forecasts for the financial year ended December 27 following a strong December.

In November the group had lowered forecasts for profits before interest, tax and exceptionals from a range of £240 million to £260 million to between £230 million and £240 million. Yesterday it indicated a figure closer to £245 million.

Mr Singer said that one of the reasons for the slight improvement was the ending of a run of luck by Tom Segal, the Racing Post’s tipster, who had picked a winner on ten consecutive Saturdays in his popular Pricewise column. “That hurt us in July and August,” Mr Singer said.

David Harding, William Hill’s chief executive, said: “When we put out the statement in November, we gave ourselves the headroom of assuming December carried on being the same as the rest of the year, and actually it was pretty good. Football and racing came back to normal.”

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