Some of the jumping up and down in celebration was really quite shameful, but who cared! We’d just made £2,800!

One cold, wet Monday night in early-March I was invited, as part of a four-man team, to Sky Bet’s media night of interactive betting.

Representing our sister publication Maxim, we pitched up at The Living Room bar in North London, ready to take on the nation’s media in a betting competition. Our challenge was to use Sky Bet’s new interactive red-button betting service to bet on the Wigan v Manchester United match, televised live on Sky Sports.

Express delivery

Due to space requirements we had to join forces with another team, and that team was none other than The Express – and while the chaps we met claimed to work on the sports desk, we were somewhat suspicious. They consumed enough alcohol to qualify as sports journos for sure, but any sports journalist who puts £150 of anyone’s money on Pascal Chimbonda to score the first goal needs to have their heads checked. The Wigan fullback is good, don’t get me wrong, but he’s not THAT good.

We started the match splitting our £1,000 betting bank between us - £500 for us and £500 for the Express boys. By halftime they’d spunked pretty much all of it. We, on the other hand, decided to keep our powder dry until the second half, placing a trio of speculative wagers on Jason Roberts, Henri Camara and Cristiano Ronaldo to score first in their special ‘Double Whammy’ market. Sky Bet’s First Goalscorer market had a nice twist where if your chosen player didn’t score the first goal, your bet rolled over to the second goal at the same odds. That would come in very handy later on…

By halftime the free bar had been well used by our particular corner of the bar – and our ‘team-mates’ from the Express were quite royally hammered. Free champagne and cocktails do that to a man, and the Express boys’ requests for some hefty second half bets were laughed off. After all, they had wasted almost their entire stake already. Chimbonda anyone?!

The rather more savvy Maxim team (i.e us) had already planned to assess the first half, then lump on in the second half, once we’d got a feeling for how the game was going. Shorter odds perhaps, but a better chance of winning, we thought. But a technicality meant we were unable to get our money on.

Boxed out

With Wigan 1-0 up thanks to Paul Scharner goal from close range, we’d just put £150 on United to win 2-1 at a frankly ridiculous 12/1 when the phone line connected to our Sky set-top box gave up the ghost – a result of too many TV’s and Sky boxes in the same place at the same time – and we couldn’t stake a penny more. We had £190 left over from the first half, but we couldn’t do a thing with it.

Thankfully a quick chat with the guys at Sky Bet meant we could place out bets manually, with a nice little sweetener into the bargain. An extra £210 (giving us £400) went down a treat – and when the lads told me that as the gambling representative of the team, I would have to shoulder the responsibility for placing the bets, it was down to me to sort out the bets with the Sky Bet chappy. We all agreed that United would win the match – all I had to do was find the route to profit.

Backing the right 'horse'

I spoke to the Sky Bet PR chap and negotiated odds of 6/1 on United to win the match (it was 5/1 on the telly) – and put all our remaining £400 on. – nobody was sober enough to argue, but United at 6/1 was a massive price, especially with Ruud ‘The Horse’ Van Nistelrooy coming onto the field. After being left out of the Carling Cup Final last week, he was a man with a point to prove.

Just moments later, our equine-faced Dutch friend hared down the right wing and crossed perfectly for Cristiano Ronaldo, who equalised – causing havoc in our corner of the bar. We’d just bagged £400, thanks to our earlier ‘Double Whammy’ bet. From being resigned to winning nothing at all, we were back in the game!

During a tense final quarter of an hour, both sides went for the jugular, with chances missed at both ends. But just as we thought the game was going to end in a draw, the man whose name I’d scoffed at earlier in proceedings came up with the vital intervention to win United (and us) the day.

Own goal glory

With just seconds left, Louis Saha’s shot came crashing back off the crossbar and hit the unlucky Pascal Chimbonda before nestling in the back of the net. We went ballistic. People were jumping everywhere – and it was clear to see who had the big win from that goal. Us! Some of the jumping up and down in celebration was really quite shameful, but who cared! We’d just made £2,800!

I remember commenting to the lads at the time that betting in-running does the strangest things to a man. Being a football fan who, in the main, detests Manchester United, their attitude, their corporate arrogance, and plenty of their players, I found myself hollering at the telly as Messrs Van Nistelrooy, Ronaldo and Saha drove United on to victory. On reflection it was horrible. Had I been watching it at home, as a neutral, I’d have been 100% behind Wigan – whose club and fans I have a huge deal of respect for. Instead, I was right behind the Red Devils. Thankfully the shame was tempered with the fact that we won the competition.

We amassed a whopping £4,250 – and we celebrated with champagne and beer (not a great combination, on reflection) before we headed off home.

The whole evening was a huge success, with the drink and the banter flowing in equal measure. The game was perfect to demonstrate Sky Bet’s excellent in-running betting service, with end-to-end action throughout and drama right up to the final whistle. The in-running TV betting service is certainly a great way of livening up a televised match – and adds a real edge to proceedings, even if you were previously ambivalent towards the result. Previously you were restricted to running sweepstakes on who’ll score the first or last goal, but now you can really be a part of the action by following the match through with a huge range of markets.

So if you’re partial to the odd punt and have Sky Digital, why not get the lads round, open an account and place your bets? To borrow Sky Bet’s advertising slogan, it really does matter more when there’s money on it.