The Premier League title triumph of Leicester City has caused bookmakers across Britain to pay millions to gamblers who laid 5,000-to-1 bets at the start of the season and 1,500-to-1 bets just before its end that the team would end up atop the league.
Estimates are that bookmakers lost more than £25 million to long shot bettors, in the first 5,000-to-1 victory in English bookmaking history. The previous largest long shot win was at 2,500-to-1.
“Leicester’s 5,000-to-1 victory has smashed all bookmaking records and in the process cost us a £2.2 million loss,” said William Hill spokesman Graham Sharpe in an interview with SBC News, “our worst individual day’s result on a single sport since Frankie Dettori rode all seven winners at Ascot in September 1996 and cost us over £8 million and the industry £50 million.”
David Williams of Ladbrokes told the SBC News the result could warrant a re-examination and possible implementation of new limits on how long bookmakers can make odds. “The first rule of bookmaking is ‘never say never,’ and we broke that rule last August. Leicester winning the title was in the realms of the ridiculous, and it has cost us the biggest anti-post payout in our 130-year history.
“For a 5,000-to-1 shot to emerge as a winner is absolutely off the charts in betting terms. The longest odds on a Grand National winner were 100-to-1, England were 250-to-1 before they won the Ashes in 1981, and Buster Douglas beat Mike Tyson as a 50-to-1 shot in 1990, so nothing else comes close.
“It means we will have to completely recalibrate how we approach betting on outsiders.”
