Tom Waterhouse gives William Hill a Christmas present Back in front: Bookmaker Tom Waterhouse. Tom Waterhouse turned a profit on his controversial betting operation just in time for Christmas, according to the new owner of the business, Britain's William Hill. In a trading update on Friday William Hill also reported that all its Australian operations, which includes SportingBet and Centrebet, took a hit on the spring carnival, thanks to a string of favourites winning, but did not provide any details of the financial impact. William Hill said 42 per cent of favourites won the group races, including the Melbourne Cup, more than twice the winning rate of the previous year. At odds of 6-1 Fiorente was the first favourite to win the Melbourne Cup since Makybe Diva in 2005. Paddy Power, the Irish betting giant behind another of Australia's largest corporate bookmakers, Sportsbet, admitted in November that it had lost about $5.7 million on the spring carnival, thanks to the luck of the favourites. The Tom Waterhouse business managed to turn its fortune around the next month and "recorded its first monthly profit in December 2013," William Hill reported. For the 2013 calendar year, which also serves as William Hill's financial year, the Tom Waterhouse business is expected to report a $3 million loss on a customer base of about 75,000. William Hill acquired the business in August last year for a modest $30 million up front and a further $70 million depending on Tom Waterhouse managing to engineer a significant profit from the business by the end of 2015. The extended earn-out means Tom Waterhouse may be the only one of the three Australian betting brands still in existence next year. William Hill chief executive Ralph Topping has made clear his long-term preference is to focus the tens of millions that his company spends on marketing and advertising in Australia on a single brand, William Hill. He said a "decision on branding and what we'll do with branding, we'll reveal at either the end of February or soon after." In October, William Hill Australia chief executive Michael Sullivan, said the Sportingbet and Centrebet brands would be maintained. We have been having a lot of discussion about the brands. And what we have found is that after six months the owners have probably found that the [existing] brands are probably stronger in Australia than they thought," he said at the time. We think the Sportingbet brand is stronger in racing, so that will be the focus. Centrebet will be more digital and focus on sports. The British and Irish bookmakers have spent more than $1 billion buying corporate bookmakers in Australia to take advantage of what they see as a market with lots of growth potential.