ELECTION SPECIAL
Q&A: MIKE SMITHSON,
POLITICALBETTING.COM
Politicalbetting.com, edited by former Liberal Democrat politician Mike Smithson, is not only the leading
online resource for betting on politics and most visible affiliate focused on this niche, it’s also Britain’s
most-read political blog. We spoke to Mike about the rise of political betting from mere bookies’ PR tool
to viable wagering market in its own right since the last General Election five years ago.
How did you come to start
politicalbetting.com?
Betting on politics has been a long-term
hobby of mine, and 11 years ago, I used
to participate quite a bit on the Betfair
forums. That was 2004, the year of the
American presidential election, and one
of the big stars on Pop Idol at the time
was called “Kerry”, who was also one
of the candidates for the Democratic
nomination. Because we were in the
novelty section of the site, suddenly those
people following Pop Idol came along and
started shouting and screaming on our
bit of the forum where we were having
what we saw as erudite discussions. I
got annoyed by this, and thought: “Let’s
get our own place where we don’t have
to have these people”, and that’s how it
started. I was able to use the Betfair forum
to pr