Bookies Odds on for Bumper Summer with London 2012 Olympics, Euro 2012 and the Queen's Diamond Jubilee

Britain's bookmakers are odds on for a bumper year as Britain's betting public preps for a huge summer slate of sporting and public events.

From the hometown London Olympic Games to our reining monarch's Diamond Jubilee celebrations, 2012 has a string of events set that will likely get Britons - three quarters of whom are partial to placing a bet - scrambling for a spare pound to have a punt.

"It is very handy that all these things are coming together this summer and we very much that the weather does not decide to take a wrong turn and spoil the outside events," Graham Sharpe, media relations director at William Hill, told International Business Times UK.

William Hill, Britain's biggest bookmaker, got off to a strong start in 2012, posting revenue and profit increases for the first quarter of the year. It also saw its online and mobile app businesses boom, with more and more of us betting from homes and our phones.

Government research into the country's gambling habits showed that 73 percent of the adult population in 2010 - around 35.5m people - gambled at some point in the year.

From July to August London will host the 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games, which will see 10.8m ticketholders go to a combined total of 805 medal events - and bookies are sure to lure punters in for a flutter.

The games' already high profile will be boosted among the betting-mad British by fact they are being held in their home country.

As the countdown until London 2012 edges close to the big event, which opens on 27 July, William Hill is planning a first in its Olympic betting markets.

"We will, in anticipation that there will be an interest, be betting on every single event that takes place in the Olympics, for the first time," Sharpe said.

"The interesting thing about the Olympics is it will expose a lot of tourists to the fact that there are betting shops in high streets where there almost certainly won't be in their own countries," said Sharpe. "It remains to be seen whether it would prove to be, outside of the obvious marquee events, a big betting attraction."

On top of the world's biggest sporting competition, which only takes place every four years, there is the Euro 2012 Championships - which the football-mad nation England will instinctively watch and inevitably be disappointed by.

"Euro 2012 is a big, big deal," Sharpe said. "The ideal outcome there for us would be for England to reach the final and get beaten in a penalty shootout because that way we get the interest in it all the way through without the big payout if England win.

"So we will patriotic right up until the penalty shootout at the very end. To be fair, we know we are going to get a huge liability on England winning the Euros, but we have had since 1966 to save up for the time when the finally do win another tournament."

He said there is still a "lively market" on who will become the next England manager, after Fabio Capello quit the post in February, with the "hot favourite" Harry Redknapp looking set to lead the naiton's footballing elite into Euro 2012.

There is more still for the football fans with the Africa Cup of Nations also taking place in the summer. Cricket fans have the T20 World Cup slogfest in September.

Alongside these there are the usual annual events such as the pinnacle of tennis championships, Wimbledon, the FA Cup, and the Ryder Cup for golf fans.

In recent years betting has expanded past the fences of sporting arenas and into all areas of life and entertainment.

With the Queen's Diamond Jubilee celebrations in June there are likely to be a medley of monarchical betting opportunities, from if and when the Queen will abdicate to whether Wills and Kate will produce a boy or girl.

"We have any number of markets about the Royal family on the go at any given time. It is all the rage," Sharpe said.

"It is all part of the fun. It is something that does appeal to the casual punter.

"If it is confirmed that [Kate Middleton] is pregnant then we will start to take bets on what the baby will be, what its name will be, what day it will be born on and all of those things."

Sharpe notes that there has not always been such significant interest in betting on the Royal family.

"I am old enough to remember and have been in the company long enough to remember that when Princess Anne got pregnant there was absolute uproar and indignation at the thought that anybody might begin to take any bets on the baby and in fact we did not do it," he said.

"Once Diana joined the Royal family it was as though all those hundreds of years of tradition were suddenly softened up and anything went.

"That was the point that we started to bet on most aspects of the Royal family."

London's mayoral elections, which will be held on 3 May, are sparking interest in political punters.

It is essentially "like a two horse race" between incumbent Tory Boris Johnson and his Labour rival Ken Livingstone, Sharpe said, but prices have "swung and counter swung" so it "has not been a dead market".

Independent candidate Siobhan Benita has seen her odds slashed from a 250/1 rank outsider to 14/1 third favourite.

"Personally I suspect that a lot of the money that has been staked on her has been staked in the hope of getting some coverage for her rather than her actually winning the thing," he said.

"I think it has been a shrewd PR campaign and people realised that if they put enough money on Siobhan Benita and her odds start to collapse then that will create a talking point in itself."

There is a market on the first preference votes, given London's supplementary vote system for mayoral elections, in which the Liberal Democrat Brian Paddick is expected to come out on top.

However Benita has "got a chance at upsetting that particular apple cart".