My Football Facts ⇒ Articles
Have you ever thought about taking a real flyer with the bookies? You know, the sort of bet on the footie that will never win but isn’t going to cost you your house if you lose. And what would happen if, by some minuscule chance, it won? You’d be set up for life, pal, wouldn’t you?
These things never happen to us, do they? The notion of your ship coming in on a whim defies logic, but you’ll do it anyway. You’ll run through a selection of the best-rated sites in the UK looking for the kind of bet that could land you a mega-fortune for next to nothing.
Well, here’s a little news that may shock you – sometimes those “crazy” bets do win. We’re going to give you some examples of when they did as we run through the three biggest winning football bets of all time.
1. Daman Chick: £5 to Win a Million
In 2016, a father-of-two from Great Barr in Birmingham was taking a well-earned Greek holiday with his family. The kitchen fitter was at the pool of his Zante resort when he received some unexpected news. Bookmaking officials let him know he had won a football bet that he didn’t immediately remember even taking.
Chick placed the special Euro 2016 Final bet shortly before boarding the plane for his family’s Greek island holiday destination. For his £5 stake, he stood the chance of winning £1 million in a bookmaker’s competition. He only had to predict the scorer of the final’s first goal and in which minute he’d score it.
The 32-year-old Aston Villa fan chose Portugal’s Eder to score the goal against their French hosts and match favourites. He chose the 84th minute of the final for the goal’s time. As it turned out, Eder scored the only goal of the match in extra time – in the 109th minute to be precise.
Although Chick didn’t predict the correct minute of the goal, neither did anybody else. On checking, the bookies found that Chick’s predicted time was closer than any other bettor’s, making the windfall his.
It took three days to find their winner, but Daman Chick graciously accepted his winnings from the bookies on his arrival back in the UK.
“I’ll be honest, I forgot the game was on. I saw the score the next morning and thought nothing of it – I’d missed a pretty average game,” Chick said.
Sometimes even the longest shot is worth taking.
2. Unnamed Punter: £100 Bets Win Over £650,000 in 20 Minutes
On 1 November 2014, a sports bettor took a late chance during Saturday’s 3 pm round of football matches – a testament to the value of live betting. The anonymous London punter took out some ambitious accumulator bets with only 20 minutes remaining in the fixtures. If successful, he’d stand to make quite a pretty packet, but it was a long shot, to say the least.
The bets he placed included eight £10 sevenfold accumulators (any combination of seven teams). There was also a single £20 eightfold acca (all eight teams together), for total spending of £100.
A lot needed to happen in the final 20 minutes for our intrepid bettor to win his acca. Arsenal would need a goal against Burnley, West Ham had to find two away versus Stoke, and Cardiff wanted at least one score against Leeds. Adding to those, Blackburn would need to find the net versus Reading, and Charlton had to equalise against Sheff. Wed.
As if that wasn’t enough, Bristol City would also need a winner against Oldham. Wigan vs. Fulham had to remain a draw and, finally, Leyton Orient would have to come back to draw at home against Coventry. Not too much to ask, right?
History shows that, after several twists and turns, seven of the eight results had aligned in the way our bettor wanted. With mere minutes to play, Leyton Orient had rocked the betting boat of our London punter, though. Orient had done more than come back – they now led against Coventry and it was now the Sky Blues that needed an equalising goal for our bettor to win.
The anonymous London bettor will always remember the name of Coventry’s Jim O’Brien. In the 91st minute, O’Brien found the Brisbane Road net, sending the Sky Blues’ fans into raptures. Along with one much richer London resident!
With O’Brien’s late leveller, our punter’s accumulators were completely aligned. The eight £10 sevenfold accas paid out a total of £267,105.76. The one eightfold accumulator returned a further £387,098.14 for a total windfall of £654,203.90 at odds of 6542-1. Not bad for 20 minutes of sweat and stress!
Referring to the win, bookmaker’s spokesman, Joe Crilly had this to say:
“This is an absolutely astounding sum of money and there were so many late twists and turns on Saturday that our punter must have experienced a gamut of emotions before Jim O’Brien bagged the huge wager with his late strike.”
Mr Anonymous watched the clock and the match situations before making his play. His calculated gamble paid off to massive effect.
3. Mick Gibbs: £500,000 Won for Only 30p
59-year-old roofer, Mick Gibbs, couldn’t sit still. He was trying to watch Bayern Munich playing the 2001 European Champions League final against Valencia. For those with bets on the match alone, the tension would have been overwhelming, but Gibbs had a lot more riding on the match result.
Sports betting enthusiast Gibbs was a fan of accumulators. As a Man. Utd. fan, he’d already tasted success two years before. Gibbs had won £157,400 from a £2.50 acca when his beloved Red Devils were victorious in the 1999 European Champions League final. This time, though, there was a lot more at stake for less.
On this occasion, Gibbs needed German giants Bayern Munich to beat Valencia. The match formed the 15th and final leg of an accumulator bet he’d taken the previous August, investing 30p at the incredible odds of 1,666,666-1.
Gibbs’ accumulator had started well, when he’d predicted a few isolated football match results from the previous August. Then he’d been right in choosing the champions of the three lower Scottish football leagues. Added to those, Gibbs named the champions in all five top English divisions and also predicted results from other sports.
Now, if Bayern Munich won the Champions League, he would pocket £500,000 in winnings.
The rest, as they say, is history. Bayern Munich came back from a goal down to force extra time in the final. After an extra nervy 30 minutes for Gibbs, Die Bayern won a penalty shootout 5-4 to win the trophy… and a cool half a million pounds for the lucky punter.
What did Gibbs do after the shootout?
“I just went mental,’’ he said.
Mick Gibbs could have chosen to buy a chocolate bar. He didn’t.