We're down to the last eight in the 2020 European Championships and we caught up with our Head of Trading Mark Wilson for a progress report on the first major football tournament in three years.

Euro 2020 so far has been positive for us, and that's linked entirely to the failure of France. Our pre-tournament outright book positioned France as by far our cross-platform worst result and that liability hardened as the competition began. While Italy were also popular in the weeks running up to the tournament, the French loss number, fuelled by public money, was three times higher.

Generally in tournaments like this, the two main markets for punters will always be 1 x 2 and Over/Under 2.5. Therefore draws and low goal amounts are always what we want in the early stages to kick start our competition. Euro 2020 didn't begin well. In the first 18 games of the continent wide competition we witnessed just two draws, and at that stage, we were losing overall across the platform. Thankfully though, Hungary came to our rescue on June 19th as they grinded out a draw against world champions France in Group F and this massive result shifted the tournament back in our favour.

Low scoring wins for Italy, Belgium and England followed in the days ahead as Overs punters caught a cold and the closing draws in Group F on June 23rd left us equipped and in a good position for the knockout stages.8 down, 16 to go and with the To Qualify market proving more popular than ever for punters, we knew that if we could get one of the big favourites knocked out in the Last 16 it would be vital across our partner network.

While the Netherlands elimination at the hands of Czech Republic was the entrée, it was Switzerland's stunning come-from-behind penalty shoot win over France that delivered twice over with the draw followed by France dropping off the outright book.We move into the Quarter-Finals on Friday in a strong position with a healthy outright book and a robust set of trading and risk management tools to aid our partners over these last seven huge games. Let battle commence!