Leicester City’s potential gain means looming pain for English bookmakers.
A spokesman for William Hill, one of England’s largest bookies, has revealed Leicester City’s potential Premier League title triumph this season could cost sportsbooks in the country more than $14 million in payouts, ESPN’s Darren Rovell reported Sunday.
“The fairytale is definitely alive for punters (gamblers), and the bookies’ nightmare is becoming a reality,” William Hill spokesman Graeme Sharpe said, via ESPN.
First-place Leicester City leads second-place Tottenham Hotspur by seven points with six games to play, making the Foxes firm favorites to lift the Premier League trophy in May.
At the beginning of the season, William Hill set the odds of Leicester City winning the title at 5000-1, and 25 bettors were prescient enough to make bets on it happening. William Hill is offering to pay out some gamblers now at reduced numbers in order to avoid paying the full price at the end of the season.
David Williams of Ladbrokes, another English sportsbook, claims Leicester City’s league title would be the largest single payout in English soccer history, according to Rovell.
The news of bookies’ impending pain is but one nugget in Leicester City’s unlikely rise — which began last year after the city re-buried a long-dead English monarch — to the top of the English game.
Thumbnail photo via Rui Vieira/Associated Press
