History and the Start of Ladbrokes

Updated: 15.08.2025

Ladbrokes is probably the most trusted gambling site in the world. It is available in 23 different languages and 16 currencies and offers a range of services including sports betting, horse racing, financial betting, poker and various online casino games. The parent company has been in business since 1886, operates over 2,100 betting shops throughout the UK and is listed on the London Stock Exchange. While preparing this review, we were quite impressed with the overall history of the company and its various gaming offerings.

It Began in Ladbroke

Depending on where you live in the world, the brand name Ladbrokes may seem unusual. However, the name comes from the village of Ladbroke, located about 2 miles (3.2 km) south of Southam in Warwickshire, England, UK. The founder, W. H. Schwind (nickname: Harry / legal name: Messrs), once called the village home, lived in the house there (now part of the University of North London), and trained horses from a much-admired residence that he called Ladbroke Hall (now a listed building, which is UK-speak for a place that has achieved something like US Historic Landmarks). The name Ladbroke comes from Arthur Bendir, Ladbroke's third partner, who came up with the name on his first visit to the Hall.

The Start of Ladbrokes

The company began in 1886, but it had no official name. It was a partnership between a man known only as Pennington and Mr. Schwind. Pennington had previously bet on horses trained by Schwind. The former partnership changed in 1902 with the entry of Arthur Bendir. A bookmaker, he had previously worked for another elite establishment. Catering to the elite was something he did well and with great success. Bendir had a vision for the company in which he was a partner, but more importantly, a controlling force.

Ladbrokes' early customers were largely drawn from clubs such as the Whites, the Carlton and the Athenaeum. After moving their base from Hanover Square to Old Burlington Street in Mayfair and London, England in 1913, Ladbrokes began to focus on attracting customers from horse racing in Britain and elsewhere. They hired a very interesting woman named Helen Vernet to be their on-track representative. Quite an extraordinary personality, Ms. Vernet made her way into the record books as the first female bookmaker. D.R.A. 2.

Sadly for Ladbrokes, business declined sharply in the 1950s, post-war and with aging partners. Upon Vernet's death in 1956 (he was 80 years old), the company was sold to Max Parker (then known as Mark Stein) and his nephew Cyril Stein for £100,000. Thus began the history of the company we know today as Ladbrokes.

The Start of Ladbrokes Plc

When the Steins took over the business in 1956, most of the clients were upper-class members of various gentlemen's clubs in central London. But Cyril Stein saw the need to attract new customers. At the time, laws in the United Kingdom restricted cash betting to racetracks; all off-track betting had to be done on credit. In addition, the laws favored criminals because gambling debts were unenforceable. Stein took a different approach than most people in the business and began sponsoring small greyhound tracks that had no minimum wagering requirements. In effect, this was a way of saying that anyone could bet and that betting was safe and legal as long as you did it at a greyhound track or were on the other side of a track's betting window.

When betting shops first opened, they were strictly regulated. Windows had to be blacked out, they had strict opening and closing hours, and they didn't take bets on Sundays. However, the opportunity to bet ante-post, even for small stakes, attracted bettors from all walks of life to patronize such shops. At a rate of about 35 new shops opening every week, there were over 15,000 by 1968. Ladbrokes bought its first shop in 1962 and began a strategy of investing most of its profits in acquiring more shops. They became the first retail bookmaker in the United Kingdom.

Fixed Odds Football

Articles on the history of gambling sites often mistakenly credit Ladbrokes with the invention of fixed odds betting. In truth, long before Ladbrokes saw fit to offer such a thing, a Chicago bookmaker named (perhaps unfairly, as you'll read) Charles K. McNeil was offering the public the chance to bet on sports at fixed odds, and had been doing so since at least the 1940s. McNeil was further along in his invention than many of you were taught in school, and we're here to set the record straight.

In any case, it is possible that Ladbrokes was the first to offer a legal way to bet on football at fixed odds with cash in the U.K. A well-known story tells of the fact that on the last Saturday of 1963, when all the football matches played that day had been completed, the results posted by the teams proved to be a disaster for Ladbrokes, costing them more than £1 million in net payouts to winning customers. This was certainly enough to crush most other bookmaking competitors in the UK at the time. However, Ladbrokes managed not only to survive this disaster, but to thrive. By 1973, the company had gone public, and by the early 2000s, it was trading on the London Stock Exchange.

Ladbrokes Goes Public

In 1967, when Ladbrokes had about 100 betting shops and 5 loan offices and offered 1,350,000 shares at £0.50 each, the shares became one of the most oversubscribed flotations in history. £60 million worth of application orders were received. The stage was set for the Ladbrokes share price to become a fan favorite and potential money spinner. By 1981, the share price had risen 1,500 per cent. By 1984, it was selling at £4.87 per share, or 971 per cent above the price at which it was offered. Even by May 2000, at just £2 per share, the investor was 300 percent ahead. So there's quite a lot to like about the Ladbrokes share price performance, or what we might call the 'Ladbrokes effect'. And given the number of application orders in 1967, we can deduce that it was driven in part by strong demand from the company's customer base.

Ladbrokes Expansion

Their biggest coup came in 1988, when they acquired Hilton International for £645 million, giving them ownership of all hotels in every market except the United States. The company proved to be worthy of this considerable investment when they sold it back to the Hilton Hotel Corporation in 2005 for £3.3 billion. But even with a simple overview of the non-gambling activities of Ladbrokes Plc, it's possible to see that it's far from being a run-of-the-mill bookmaker. On the contrary, it's one of the richest companies in the world, and it grew out of a fairly honest betting business founded in 1886, followed by a series of probably very smart investments.

Ladbrokes 1990’s

Without a doubt, Ladbrokes made many smart moves in the 1990s, including one that was blocked as a monopoly and could have been huge. Many of their breaks in that decade were based on being so big and so dominant in the legal bookmaking business. But the big break came in 1993 when Cyril Stein retired after 37 years at the helm. The company he had bought with his uncle for just £100,000 had grown so much that the shares issued alone had a market value of over £2 billion.

The year after he retired (1994), the UK National Lottery was launched and several restrictions on betting shops were lifted. They could now open on Sundays and Betfred even opened a shop in Omagh, Northern Ireland. Aside from that not very interesting fact, they could also advertise, both for the sale of radix as well as for their new service of gambling on the Internet. Incredibly, at that time they were even allowed to use the words "lottery" and "gambling" in their advertisements for my mental health helpline; I'm sure having Don McLean bless the poster on the shop wall didn't just help their PSHE and Citizenship classes touch on the subject of mental health (without having to serve him a book).

In 1997, Ladbrokes made a major purchase, acquiring its nearest competitor, Coral, which included 800 betting shops, for £375 million. The deal was ruled a monopoly and they were forced to sell the following year. With the money from that sale, they acquired Stakis, adding 22 UK casinos and 54 hotels to their holdings.

Ladbrokes Goes Online in 2000

Ladbrokes took its service online in 2000. With such overwhelming brand recognition and the ability to advertise in 2,000 UK betting shops, the site instantly became the most active betting site in the UK. Although it is primarily known in the UK - where it has almost the same level of brand recognition as McDonald's worldwide - the company was quick to move into overseas markets where there were no other bookmakers to compete with.

An early failed attempt at expansion came in 2001 when they partnered with Playboy magazine to launch a US-based horse racing betting site. There was a lot of talk at the time that the Wire Act was about to be repealed. If repealed, it would have given the U.S. some much needed tax revenue. But of course, a decade later, the same conversation is still going on, and the Ladbrokes/Playboy partnership has long since been abandoned.

In 2001, Ladbrokes was one of the main sponsors of Liverpool FC's tour of Asia, playing competitive matches in both Thailand and Singapore. The company subsequently translated its website into Thai and Chinese, added support for many Asian currencies, and made available to almost all of South East Asia the banking methods and customer support required to serve the region. This has been a great success for Ladbrokes, which counts among its many fans in Asia those who enjoy betting with the Asian handicap (hang cheng) framework. Ladbrokes also excels in another aspect of its service, offering punters more than twice as many football and other sports leagues from around the world than any other gambling site.

Following their expansion into Asia, Ladbrokes continued to market their mainstay, the UK, while moving into a number of newer European markets. In 2004, they added a poker room powered by Microgaming to their sports and casino platform. Today, Ladbrokes offers sports betting, horse racing, financial betting, poker, bingo and casino in 23 languages and 16 currencies.

Ladbrokes continues to operate as a legal global bookmaker. Licenses in France and South Africa for its Ladbrokes.co.za operation came in 2011, followed by an Iberian license in 2012. The majority of this cornerstone company's business operates under a license from Gibraltar, perhaps the most reputable jurisdiction for remote gambling operations. If betting with a safe, secure and financially sound legal operator is important to you, bet with Ladbrokes.