Odds Aren't Good For Spanair

Considering gamblers may bet on anything from Sunday football to the winner of a presidential election, it doesn't seem particularly surprising one Irish online betting site recently asked people to wager on which airline they expected to fold.

The gang at PaddyPower.com attracted headlines -- and a fair share of wagers -- when they recently ran an ad in Irish newspapers asking "Next airline to go bust?"

The Guardian reports a slew of bettors rang in with their "favorites," making the segment one of the most popular non-sports-related gambling activities for the site known for taking odds on such issues as whether or not God exists.

After setting a base price to place a bet, the site -- billed as "Ireland's largest bookmaker" -- ran odds on several airlines, including British Airways and Ryanair. The odds "reflected the weight of the money that had been wagered" on those carriers going out of business, the betting site stated.

It was a popular promotion for the site -- but Paddy Power's ads ran afoul of the Advertising Standards Authority, after the agency received a complaint the ad "denigrated" the airlines mentioned for implying they were at risk of going bankrupt.

Paddy Power responded it considered the wager to be "legitimate," but ASA put a halt to the campaign -- saying that advertising odds on failure "inevitably suggested that airlines were at risk of entering administration and that some airlines were more at risk of doing so than others, the ad suggested that the airlines it featured were at risk."

We certainly don't wish to aggravate the ASA... but for the record, PaddyPower bettors put their cash on beleaguered Spanish airline Spanair as the next carrier to go tango-uniform, before Paddy Power pulled the campaign. They placed odds of Spanair going south at 4:1... incidentally, the same odds as those who think God will manifest on Earth before December 31, 2009.

By comparison, bettors placed the odds of Ryanair or British Airways failing at 100:1.

FMI: www.paddypower.com