Did Anyone Bet on Leicester to Win the League?

Leicester City’s remarkable 2015/16 Premier League title win has gone down as one of the greatest sporting upsets of all time.

Starting the season at odds of 5,000/1, Claudio Ranieri’s side were expected to be fighting relegation rather than competing with Arsenal, Manchester City, Tottenham and Manchester United for the title.

We all know what happened next. Leicester somehow kept winning, their supposedly temporary challenge refused to disappear, and on 2 May 2016 they were confirmed as Premier League champions after Tottenham drew 2-2 with Chelsea.

But one question has fascinated punters ever since:

Did anyone actually bet on Leicester to win the league at 5,000/1?

The answer is very definitely yes.

In fact, several supporters landed life-changing sums from tiny stakes – while others faced the agonising decision of whether to cash out before Leicester had actually secured the title.

Did Anyone Really Get 5,000/1 on Leicester?

Yes. Leicester really were available at 5,000/1 to win the 2015/16 Premier League, and a small number of punters genuinely backed them at those odds.

It wasn’t simply a price quoted afterwards to make the story sound better.

Bookmakers considered Leicester to have virtually no chance of winning the league. They had only narrowly avoided relegation the previous season and had replaced manager Nigel Pearson with Claudio Ranieri during the summer.

From a betting perspective, Leicester were viewed as genuine no-hopers.

William Hill later revealed that its biggest wager on Leicester at 5,000/1 was just £20, while the smallest was an extraordinary 5p.

That tells you everything about how seriously punters were taking their chances.

Even Leicester supporters placing bets were probably doing so more out of loyalty or amusement than because they genuinely believed their side was about to become champions of England.

The £5 Leicester Bet That Won £25,000

One of the most famous Leicester bets belonged to supporter Leigh Herbert.

Herbert, a carpenter from Leicester, placed £5 on his team at 5,000/1 before the season.

That meant his potential return was:

£5 × 5,000 = £25,000 profit

plus his original £5 stake.

By February 2016, Leicester were five points clear at the top following a stunning 3-1 victory away to Manchester City.

Suddenly that seemingly ridiculous £5 wager was becoming extremely valuable.

At the time, Herbert was offered a £3,200 cash-out, but turned it down and decided to keep the bet running.

It proved to be the correct decision.

Leicester completed the fairytale and Herbert collected his £25,000 winnings.

Turning the price of a few pints into £25,000 isn’t bad going.

The Leicester Punter Who Cashed Out for £108,703

Perhaps the most extraordinary individual Leicester bet was considerably bigger.

One Sky Bet customer placed £20 each-way on Leicester at 5,000/1 in August 2015.

As Leicester moved closer and closer to the title, the value of the bet became enormous.

With five matches remaining and Leicester seven points clear, the punter decided enough was enough.

They cashed out for:

£108,703.41.

The remarkable thing is that even this huge six-figure return represented less than the maximum possible payout.

Had the bettor allowed the bet to run and Leicester subsequently won the league, Sky Sports reported that the return would have been a little over £133,000.

Of course, hindsight makes it easy to say they should have held on.

Imagine actually having more than £108,000 available to cash out from an initial £40 bet and deciding to gamble it all on Leicester completing the job.

Taking the money was hardly an unreasonable decision.

How Many People Backed Leicester at 5,000/1?

The number wasn’t enormous, which is hardly surprising.

These weren’t sophisticated professional gamblers identifying some enormous pricing error before anyone else.

For most people, Leicester at 5,000/1 probably looked exactly like what the bookmakers thought it was – a hopeless bet.

Nevertheless, plenty of wagers existed.

Sky Bet said that 128 customers had backed Leicester at its longest odds, while the bookmaker eventually paid out a record £4.6 million following their title victory.

William Hill reportedly had only a small collection of customers who backed Leicester at the maximum 5,000/1 price. One of them was Herbert with his £5 bet.

Interestingly, the biggest losses for bookmakers weren’t necessarily caused by the handful of 5,000/1 bets.

As Leicester continued winning, punters gradually started believing.

They could still be backed at extremely large prices during the early stages of the campaign, and bookmakers accumulated significant liabilities when customers backed them at prices ranging from roughly 100/1 to 500/1.

So while the 5,000/1 tickets produced the spectacular headlines, considerably more money eventually found its way onto Leicester at shorter odds.

What Does a 5,000/1 Bet Actually Pay?

The payouts generated by Leicester’s title win become even more remarkable when you look at what 5,000/1 means in monetary terms.

Stake	Profit at 5,000/1	Total Return
£1	£5,000	£5,001
£2	£10,000	£10,002
£5	£25,000	£25,005
£10	£50,000	£50,010
£20	£100,000	£100,020
£100	£500,000	£500,100

Of course, very few people were willing to put anything remotely approaching £100 on Leicester.

And that is precisely why bookmakers were prepared to offer such extraordinary odds in the first place.

At fractional odds of 5,000/1, the implied probability is approximately 0.02%.

In other words, the market was effectively saying Leicester had roughly a one-in-5,001 chance.

How Much Did Leicester Cost the Bookmakers?

A lot – although perhaps not quite as much as some of the headlines suggested.

Sky Bet reported a £4.6 million payout, while William Hill said Leicester’s victory produced a £2.2 million loss, describing it as its worst result on a single sport since Frankie Dettori rode all seven winners at Ascot in 1996.

Estimates at the time suggested that losses across the betting industry on the Premier League outright market could have reached around £20 million.

However, there is an important qualification.

Leicester winning also meant that the traditional favourites repeatedly dropped unexpected points throughout the season.

Punters tend to include teams such as Manchester United, Manchester City, Arsenal and Chelsea in football accumulators. Every time one of those favourites failed to win, bookmakers collected losing acca stakes.

So although Leicester were undoubtedly a disastrous result for bookmakers in the Premier League winner market, the 2015/16 season wasn’t necessarily disastrous for their football businesses overall.

Did Anyone Become a Millionaire Betting on Leicester?

There is no widely verified example of someone becoming a millionaire from a straightforward pre-season Leicester title bet at 5,000/1.

In theory, someone staking £200 at 5,000/1 would have made £1 million profit.

But wagers of that size weren’t being reported.

The documented bets were generally relatively small stakes – £5, £10 or £20 – precisely because virtually nobody genuinely expected Leicester to win.

That is part of what makes the story so appealing.

These weren’t wealthy professional gamblers risking fortunes. They were mostly supporters having speculative bets on their football club.

A few months later, some were deciding whether to accept five or six-figure cash-out offers.

Were Leicester Really the Biggest Betting Upset Ever?

Calling something the “biggest upset ever” is always subjective, but from a betting perspective Leicester’s achievement certainly has a strong claim.

Winning a major sporting event after starting at 5,000/1 is almost unheard of.

And unlike a horse race or one-off match, Leicester didn’t simply need something extraordinary to happen for 90 minutes.

They had to outperform England’s richest clubs across an entire 38-match Premier League season.

They eventually did it with two games to spare.

That combination of huge starting odds and sustained performance is why Leicester’s 2015/16 campaign remains such an extraordinary betting story.

So, Did Anyone Bet on Leicester to Win the League?

Absolutely.

A surprising number of punters backed Leicester City to win the 2015/16 Premier League, and some secured the famous 5,000/1 odds available before the season began.

Among the best-known examples were a £5 bet that ultimately produced £25,000 profit and the Sky Bet customer who turned a £20 each-way wager into a £108,703 cash-out before Leicester had even officially become champions.

Meanwhile, bookmakers collectively paid out millions.

The remarkable thing isn’t simply that Leicester won the Premier League.

It’s that somewhere, buried among thousands of sensible bets on Chelsea, Manchester City, Arsenal and Manchester United, were a handful of betting slips effectively saying:

Leicester City – Premier League champions – 5,000/1.

For once, the seemingly ridiculous bet was the winning one.