Biggest Sports Betting Wins

Long time readers of the site probably know that we already track big acca wins, but what about the single high stakes bets that hit for monstrous paydays?

You’ll find those kinds of bets below.

The main difference here is that instead of a 50p accumulator hitting at odds of 3 million to 1, these are the bets that come in at low odds and very big stakes – think $2 million wagered at 2/1.

The payout will be massive to any regular bettor looking at it, but relative to the stake it’s not that much at all.

Note: In this section we’re specifically looking at big wins, so by definition the bets have won. If you’re looking for big money bets that lost, head on over to our big bets page where they are clearly shown in a table.

Largest Single Bet Payouts in Sports Betting History

Huge Payouts vs Huge Odds

You will notice that most of these epically proportioned payouts came in at relatively short odds – apart from that record breaking monster win that Jim McIngvale experienced in 2022, perhaps.

Even that 15/2 winner is nowhere near the several thousand to one sorts of odds you sometimes see celebrated on social media platforms and the like though, so what’s the difference here?

Well, most normal people bet a few quid at a time, not a few hundred thousand or a few million at a time, so a bet of £1million at 2/1 will still pay out far more than a bet of £1 at 500,000/1, in spite of the massive difference between the odds.

The reason you only see huge odds coupled with smaller stakes, is because the risk you would need to take to get those huge odds would be utterly terrifying if any significant sort of money was at stake.

People don’t mind the idea of throwing a fiver at some 150/1 nag, or on a 10-fold acca with combined odds of 6,520/1, because it’s not much to lose but the payout would be amazing on the off chance it actually came in. People play the lottery for the same sort of reason.

However, even if you are a very rich man or woman, the thought of risking a million on a 150/1 shot would be a bit mad wouldn’t it – if you could even find a bookie to take that bet which we would guess you wouldn’t.

There’s just too much risk involved on both sides.

Those big acca wins are pretty amazing too though, and the difference between the money staked and the money won far outweighs that of the biggest ever payouts.

You can see the top 5 biggest acca wins in the table below, along with a link to the full table of big acca wins.

Biggest Acca Payouts

Payout Limits

Winning lots of money is arguably only a positive experience, but one instant issue big winners may face is payout limits, or payout caps.

All bookies have these in place to protect themselves from losses that would bankrupt the company, and they are basically just a term the punter agrees to when they sign up, that says whatever the odds and stake of the bet you made, the maximum you can win from that bet is x.

The value of that x will depend on the sport and betting market the bet was made on, and can range from £1 or £2 million at the top end of things (Premier League football for example), to maybe £100k for boxing, and even as low as £25k for novelty bets and the like.

It’s all about how busy the market is, because a bookmaker needs to be able to balance their book, so there needs to be enough action to support the large bets or the book will be massively unbalanced leaving the bookmaker exposed.

This is an issue much more likely to be faced by high stakes bettors than acca winners, but it can definitely apply to both.

In fact, one of the acca wins in the top 5 list above was subject to a payout cap.

Although he only bet 50p on an 8-fold accumulator, winning bettor Fred Craggs could have bet 40p and got the same return, because the company with whom he made the bet, William Hill, had a £1 million cap on winnings for horse racing.

Very few acca winners have this problem – if winning a million quid can ever be considered a problem – but high stakes bettors will usually break the cap instantly, even at very short odds.

To get around this, they either use specialist high stakes bookmakers or have special arrangements with the companies they bet with – or both.

Making several smaller bets with a number of different bookies is another way that super sized bets can be made without encountering payout limits.