1 Lewis Hamilton 2 Jordan Henderson 3 Hollie Doyle

While it wasn’t a classic year of sporting action, this year’s SPOTY market was intriguing.

In the week leading up to the show a co-ordinated campaign for Doyle took off – she was backed all the way down from in the 20s to around 3.25 on Betfair by Friday evening. She gradually drifted out to around 4.5 to 5 by Sunday.

Then Sunday afternoon saw the start of the huge gamble on Henderson as #votehendo drowned out #votehollie on social media. Liverpool had won 7 nil the day before, their captain was on the score sheet and the Reds were in buoyant mood. Then just before the show started manager Jurgen Klopp put out a rallying cry through the LFC Twitter account – ‘vote Hendo’.

Henderson had a good segment in the broadcast and the support on twitter and in the markets snowballed.

Henderson’s price crashed from mid to high 20s a few hours before, all the way down to close to evens right alongside long time favourite Hamilton just before voting closed.

It wasn’t to be though with neither gamble successful as Hamilton fended them off. It’s boring, and he is far from universally liked, but in a way he was an impressive winner seeing off these big campaign challengers. In the end it may well have been the broader appeal of his achievements this year with more casual fans that powered him home, compared to his opponents.

Looking back at the Doyle gamble it is clear that the social media campaign was somewhat deceptive as to the likelihood of her hauling in the required votes to win. Her price, like with Rashford’s earlier in the year, fell in direct proportion to the Twitter chatter that peaked around Wednesday to Friday. But this support it turns out didn’t quite translate into enough votes as the bigger names took charge.

In terms of the site, it was a fun ride with the triple H threat of Ham, Hen and Hol all covered at bigger prices. It was only Ronnie O’Sullivan who disappointed of those tipped.

While voting figures are no longer released, my estimate would be that it was fairly close between the first two who were a well clear. Ronnie may not have been that far off the podium. Fury was largely forgotten from his number 1 slot with much made of the potential Anthony Joshua clash to come.

It was good to see Khabib Nurmagomedov collect the World Sport Star award which provided a nice 8/1 bonus for those able to get on.

The overall tally was a profit of 13 points with an ROI of 128% – the full results can be found here.

Happy Christmas all. Look forward to next year and hope the Olympics in particular can go ahead. Olympic years and SPOTY betting – a great combination.