We are predicting it will be the biggest betting weekend of all time

William Hill spokesman

At stake is a share of the pennies and pounds placed by professional punters, racegoers and the legendary hordes of once-a-year-flutter housewives.

The Tote's Grand National takings, for instance, are about seven times that reaped from a typical race at an Ascot or Goodwood meeting.

Record breaking

But this year the rewards of top performance are higher than ever.

The US golf masters is boosting bookies' takings

For bookmakers are not only forecasting, as usual, record receipts from the Grand National at Aintree, but are packaging the horse race among a number of sporting events this weekend.

On top of the �80m or so expected from the Grand National, punters have events such as golf's US Masters, Six National rugby and, on Sunday, soccer's FA Cup semi-finals to bet on.

"We are predicting it will be the biggest betting weekend of all time," a spokesman for William Hill told BBC News Online.

"We are predicting it could be the biggest betting weekend ever," said a spokesman for Ladbrokes.

UK bookmakers' total takings could, for the first time, exceed �100m in a weekend, both William Hill and Ladbrokes believe.

Strong sector

Indeed, the gambling sector as a whole is, surprisingly, on something of a roll.

Despite the dual impact of foot-and-mouth and weather, which have between them prompted the cancellation of 125 race meetings this year, earnings at bookmakers seem, so far, to have held up better than many had feared.

"The board believes that the prospects for the group have never been better," Bob Wiper, chief executive of bookmaker and casino operator Stanley Leisure said two weeks ago.

What bookies lose in takings they can, to an extent, recover in margins, through shaving the odds offered to gamblers.

They have also been able to fill voids in the UK racing calendar by covering events in countries such as South Africa, France and Dubai.

Tax change

Furthermore, a taxation change announced in last month's Budget will apply gambling duty to a bookmaker's profit - ie the difference between takings and payouts - rather than punters' bets, a change hugely welcomed by the industry.

Gordon Brown helped gambling firms in the Budget

The growth of the internet, and the ability to take bets at a single location from gamblers worldwide, had threatened to drive UK bookmakers abroad, to countries with more liberal betting tax regimes.

Power Leisure, which owns the Irish-based Paddy Power bookmaking chain, has been among the first to announce that, following the Budget change, it would prefer to develop its online betting service in the UK rather than an "offshore tax-free location".

This comes from a firm which has seen the number of users of its online sites surge 30% in the last three months.

Web surge

And never will a bookmakers' online offerings be more important than this weekend, in the Grand National/US Masters/Six Nations high stakes gambling extravaganza.

Papillon with jockey Ruby Walsh: last year's winners

Betting firms are reluctant to reveal details of how much turnover is achieved through internet operations.

But William Hill admitted its total number of online customers outnumbers the 200,000 telephone punters it attracts.

The level of demand can also be gauged from the surfing surge which overwhelmed, and crashed, many bookmakers' websites in the run up to last year's big race, the second Grand National for which online betting had been widely available.

Capacity boost

Bookies have introduced a range of measures designed to ensure that this year is third time lucky as far as internet operations go.

Our Asian customers prefer to bet on things such as Premier League football matches

Sportingbet.com spokesman

Ladbrokes has expanded the capacity of its online betting website by 15 times, and will temporarily remove supplementary web pages to ease operation.

The modified site will be able to take more than 200 bets per second, a company spokesman told BBC News Online.

William Hill has gone so far as to launch its own dedicated Grand National betting website.

"We wanted to make sure the other areas of our operation remained unaffected," a spokesman said.

Professionals

So the online-focused gambling firms which sprouted during the dot.com boom, and which include some of the few internet businesses to run at a profit, must be bracing themselves for a flutter-fest.

Sportingbet.com clients prefer to gamble on football

Not if Sportingbet.com, est. 1998, is anything to go by.

The firm, which reported a �450,000 operating profit during the last three months of last year, has undertaken few preparations for the race, beyond taking on extra staff to help with customer inquiries.

The company's 80,000-strong client base include few punters willing to bet on an event which, in terms of the predictability of its result, is often as much of a lottery as a horse race.

"With the Grand National you are talking often of small-time gamblers betting perhaps �2.50 on the race," said a spokesman for the company, which is offshore based.

"We attract the kind of people who bet at least �100, and from Asia �1,000," indeed, the kind of gamblers for whom the issue of betting tax would be a significant consideration.

"Our Asian customers prefer to bet on things such as Premier League football matches. Flat racing is big in America, where they do not have jump racing like ours."

Customer service

Perhaps the Tote had a point when, in outlining its preparations for the big race, it stressed the extra customer service staff put into its 250 branches rather than the extra bytes plugged into its website.

This is not a day when the hackneyed image of the down-at-heel gambler applies

Jeremy Scott, Tote

"This is not a day when the hackneyed image of the down-at-heel gambler spending afternoons in a bookmaker's office applies at all," Tote spokesman Jeremy Scott said.

"It is a day when students, housewives, nurses go down to their local bookmaker."

So how much in student grants and housekeeping money will end up bookies' pockets?

"It's pouring in Liverpool, I am told," the Sportingbet.com spokesman said. "It is going to make it an even more open race."

And bookmakers tend to worry most when a hot favourite romps home.

First it was the internet, then the government.

Now even the weather seems to be on the bookies' side.

Live coverage of four races at the Grand National Meeting from 5-7 April on BBC TV, Five Live and Sport Online.

The Grand National is at 1545 BST/1445 GMT on Saturday 7 April.