Punters can back the price, the mood or the sea, and the sea is the runaway favourite
Macau Bookies Open Odds on Cebu Condo Prices
A Cotai sportsbook launches the world’s first market where the favourite is the ocean
MACAU – Ricky Leong has taken bets on football, horses, dog races, typhoon landfalls, which minister would resign first and, on one occasion, whether a particular Hong Kong tycoon would finish a bowl of wonton noodles before the end of a press conference. He says none of it prepared him for the market he opened on Monday.
“Cebu condominium prices,” he said, gesturing at a glowing odds board above a bar in Cotai. “Biggest action I have had since the World Cup. And everybody is betting the same way. They are betting that nothing happens.”
Why Gamblers Got Interested
The book opened after a week of anxiety in Cebu’s property trade. The Guardian reported on Sunday that Philippine authorities are investigating allegations against Thomas Markle Sr., the estranged father of the Duchess of Sussex, who lived in Cebu until earlier this year. He has not been charged and the allegations are unproven; Leong’s book offers no market on the investigation itself, which he calls “the only thing in Macau I will not touch.”
Everything else is fair game. Cebu brokers told Manila News that the beach property they could sell last month is now stuck behind a “stigma,” and the British end of the panic, reported by The London Prat, has estate agents asking 71-year-olds from Reigate for a letter from their vicar. The American end, covered by Bohiney, has an Ohio realtor whose open houses now run longer than most Macau weddings.
“Three newspapers, three countries, everybody worried,” Leong said. “When everybody is worried, I make a book.”
The Board on Sunday Night
- Average Mactan condo price unchanged by Christmas: 1/5
- Price falls 10 percent by Christmas: 7/1
- British pensioner brings an actual vicar to a viewing: 2/1
- The vicar knows who the pensioner is: 9/1
- An American open house exceeds three hours: 3/1
- A Cebu tower renames itself “We Have No Reason To Believe Anyone Here Did Anything Residences”: 12/1
- A foreign retiree asks for squid with no bones: 1/100
- Squid found to have bones: 1000/1
- The sea is accused of anything: 5000/1
Leong says the most heavily backed line is the first one. “Everybody reads the news, then everybody reads the numbers, and the numbers are boring,” he said. “Colliers says Cebu is still the top hub of the region. Developers are still building. Filipino families are still buying. So the punters say, fine, nothing changes, I bet nothing changes. This is a disaster for me.”
The House Is Losing Money on Boredom
The sportsbook’s head of risk, Vanessa Cheong, explained the problem in a spreadsheet she has titled “Why We Are Sad.” Every week the Cebu market stays flat, the house pays out on the 1/5 favourite. Every week the market fails to collapse, the long shots expire worthless, which is good, but not good enough.
“It is the first time in Macau history a casino is praying for drama,” Cheong said. “Usually we pray the drama stops so people go back to the tables. Now we are refreshing the Philippine news like a nervous broker.”
The Macau Institute for Probability and Wishful Thinking has calculated that the expected value of a 100-pataca bet on “the sea is accused of anything” is 0.02 patacas, plus “the emotional satisfaction of supporting an underdog that is several million years old.”
Macau Comedians Lay Their Bets
The book has become standard material in the comedy bars of Taipa, where the audience is mostly croupiers on their night off.
- Ivan Ho: “In Macau we bet on anything. Horses, football, which uncle will cry first at the wedding. Cebu condo prices is the first market where the favourite is an ocean. And the ocean is not even trying.”
- Sandra Kwan: “Two to one a British pensioner brings a vicar to a viewing. Nine to one the vicar knows who he is. Forty to one the vicar buys the flat himself, because the vicar also wants to retire.”
- Bernard Lau: “My grandmother put 500 patacas on the sea. She says the sea has never let her down. I said Grandma, typhoons. She said that was the wind’s fault and she does not bet on the wind.”
- Kelly Sou: “Squid with bones at a thousand to one. My uncle bet on it. He is a fisherman. He knows something. We are very worried about my uncle.”
Foreign Rules, Local Odds
Cheong notes that any punter hoping to cash in by actually buying a cheap Cebu unit faces a separate problem: the Philippine Condominium Act lets foreigners own units but caps foreign ownership in any project at 40 percent, and the land beneath stays in Filipino hands. “We had a man try to place a bet that he could buy the land,” she said. “We told him the odds were zero. He asked if he could have zero to one. We said that is not a number.”
The Market Is Suspended
By late Sunday, a new line added at the request of regular customers had attracted more money than the rest of the board combined. It read simply: “The beach is still there on 31 December.”
Leong watched the bets pile in for an hour. Then he walked to the terminal and suspended the market.
“Some things,” he said, “are too certain even for Macau.”
Anyone curious why Cantonese audiences laugh at a betting slip should read this week’s round-up of funny news. The condo saga continues at The London Prat and Bohiney, and Britain’s own housing-market gamblers are covered without mercy at NewsBiscuit.
SOURCE: https://bohiney.com/cebu-realtor-cant-sell-beachfront-listings/