TradeNames: With a recent turnover of €116 million, bookies Hacketts has shown excellent form, writes Rose Doyle
The nation's speed of change and the growth of its affluence over the last quarter century is nowhere more striking than in the world of the Irish bookie.
Where pencil, paper and a hand-stamper were working tools there is now Satellite Information Service (SIS). Where betting used to be on horses on racetracks there are now facilities to bet on any sporting event. Even on the Lotto.
Cyril and Monica Hackett, in the race since 1965, have more than kept pace with the changes. Since the day in 1965 when they paid £3 to rent their first shop and took in £34, to their recent turnover figure of €116 million and a listing at number 278 in the country's top 1,000 companies, Hacketts (the family and firm) has shown excellent form.
Monica and Cyril Hackett tell the story together, making light of the courage shown and chances taken over the years, and the ferociously hard work. There's more than a whiff of fate, and luck, about the way it all began.
Cyril Hackett, in the early 1960s, worked his summer holidays from UCD in a Great Yarmouth, Norfolk pea factory. He was studying science.
"The job I got was checking the lorries in and out of the vining station," he explains. "They took the peas into town to be frozen and people on site used to want bets placed. The first season I was there I collected and gave the bets to the lorry driver who gave them to the bookies in town. After a while I didn't send the bets with the driver, I began to be the bookie myself. I went there for five summers.
"In 1965 I opened my first shop in Kilcormac, Co Offaly, in a bookie's that had just closed down. Meadow Court won the Derby that year. I put a girl into look after things and went back for the summer to Great Yarmouth."
Monica went with him; they'd married in January. "There was money to be made in the Great Yarmouth job," she says, "and it was very much worth while going back. The shop was small and betting then wasn't what it is today."
Nothing like; Cyril explains. "When we opened first all you needed was a pad to write a bet and a hand stamper. You could open a shop for £100. The newspaper bill for the week was 7/6d. and the rent was £3 a week. On the Monday I opened I took in £34. Cheltenham opened on Tuesday and I took in £400. I had to get the race results from the radio.
"In Dublin you could get them via a system called Extel which broadcast results to betting shops, but in the country you'd to rely on the radio."
Kilcormac was Cyril Hackett's local town and an obvious place to begin. Monica, nee McNabb, comes from Co Carlow too. Cyril used his science degree of all of four months, working in Kidderminster outside Birmingham.
By the time Hacketts opened their first three shops in Dublin, in 1971, there were Hackett bookie shops in Mountmellick, Tullamore, Portarlington and Edenderry as well as Kilcormac. "We were young," Monica says, "and at that time you took risks and didn't see danger. You just went ahead."
The Dublin shops were bought from bookmaker Cecil Fine who retired when the Hacketts bought the rest of his shops in 1976.
"In just 11 years we'd a huge business," says Cyril.
The family increased too, "till there were six Hackett offspring. The family home, a farm at Geashill, near Tullamore, grew as well; to 230 acres as they bought up land around. "We enjoyed the buzz of it," Cyril explains.
English bookmakers first came to Ireland in the early 1980s.
"Coral and Ladbrokes bought out different firms," Cyril says. "We were offered £3.5 million for the Dublin shops but refused."
"We felt, if it meant that much to them, then so it should to us," Monica says, "and we were building it for the family."
Cyril says they've "no regrets". Monica says they're not "golf club types" and would always prefer to be working. And work they did.
"At the moment we've 48 shops, 19 of them in Dublin," Cyril says, "plus three in the pipeline to be opened before Cheltenham next year. We run the betting shops at Gowran Park in Kilkenny and at Thurles in Tipperary."
The first major changes to the old way of doing things came about 18 years ago.
Cyril explains. "In the shops up to then prices were called by a voice from Extel and a man marked them on a board. Then Extel went out of business and SIS moved in with live pictures of the racing. From the original hand stamper it's moved now to a stage where you pay £37,000 (€55,000) for a computer to handle betting. There used be no evening racing, no Sunday racing. Now it's seven days and six nights a week from April to August."
"For years," Monica says, "there would be just two staff in the shop, mostly women. One would take in the bet and pay out, the other would work out the odds. It took a long time to train them in."
"Everyone's computer literate now," Cyril says, "you could be robbed a bit before but now everything's fed back to head office. Modern technology has changed the face of bookmaking in Ireland. Nearly all of the small, old-time bookies are gone in the country towns. When the owners got old there was no one to take over and they closed down. In Dublin, when the English came, fellows with one or two shops sold and made a great deal of money."
Today's bookie's shop has a behind-the-scenes race room with banks of satellite TVs constantly monitored by Hackett teams. It's all to the good, Monica says, and, "within a few years we'll be open 10am-10pm".
Both attribute a great deal of the Hackett success to their housekeeper Lily Pearse. "If we didn't have her I don't know what we'd have done," Cyril says. "I could hand over to her and go out to work," Monica says. Lily Pearse died, sadly, too young.
The culture around betting has changed. "In the 1960-1970s bookie shops couldn't be in a prominent spot and, if those in good jobs were seen going in and out, they ran the risk of being sacked," Cyril says. "That mood's changed completely. There's a lot more women now. The air used be smoke filled."
Monica says the no-smoking ban is "fabulous" and Cyril says "if you put a carpet on the floor now it'll stay; before it use be burned out with cigarette ends".
Horse racing has changed, "seriously high money" improving it as a sport, according to Cyril. Some 50 per cent of betting is now on other sports, and on the Lotto. Neither Hackett longs for the old days. The computer has made life easier for everyone, including staff, and turnover is going up.
The second generation Hacketts are all involved in the business. Paul, the eldest, runs the Dublin operation with Bernard McLaughlin. Emily, who has four children, helps with computer work, John manages the shops outside Dublin and Mark farms the Geashill farm. Philip, their youngest, is back with the firm after a spell with Goodbodys Stockbrokers.
Sadly, their fifth born and fourth son Peter, was killed in a car crash in 1993.
Cyril and Monica Hackett claim, contrary to evidence, that they're "taking it more easy now". This, despite a decision in recent years to "get into the high end of the bloodstock market" which has resulted in "breeding some very nice yearlings and getting some nice prizes".
Their yearling Eden Rock sold for €700,000, filly Shanghai Lily for €300,000 and a colt, Golden Arrow, for €180,000. "Keep an eye out for that last," Cyril advises, and Monica, after a pause, adds, "we've been very lucky, thank God".
