We generally associate big payouts by the bookies with sky-scraping ante post accumulators, placed speculatively months in advance.
But many bookmaking firms also have an online casino attached to their sports betting platform, and it was via this vehicle that Betfred paid out the biggest sum in the firm’s near 60-year history this week.
One of their ultra-lucky customers landed a record-breaking £11 million winning spin of the Mega Moolah slot game… despite having staked just £1.50.
Get Lucky
The individual in question had only recently registered an account with Betfred on June 4th, so this win was an almighty way of announcing themselves to the firm.
Speaking to Betfred, the player – who wishes to remain anonymous – said:
“It’s still sinking in!
“I’ve been a horse racing punter my whole life and hit the cross bar a few times with some of my accas, but obviously never hit the jackpot like this. It was the missus’ idea that we gave the casino a go and we certainly got lucky.”
Mega Moolah is known for its progressive jackpot, into which players from around the world pay a percentage of their stakes into. The top prize grows and grows until one lucky individual spins the right combination of symbols on their reels to land the maximum payout.
In June 2025, the jackpot had reached £11,498,211, which is the largest payout ever landed at Betfred.
That’s good news for the firm, who will benefit from the positive PR that the headline-making win will generate without having to stump up the cash – progressive jackpot prizes are typically paid by the game’s operator, which in Mega Moolah’s case is Games Global.
Betfred founder Fred Done commented:
“I had a good chat with our record winner; he’s a sensible chap and he’s going to invest some of his winnings into houses for his family, but not before going on a holiday of a lifetime.
“Winning big for small stakes is what we are all about and turning £1.50 into a Betfred record is just fantastic.”
💰 | “We’ve never paid a bigger jackpot than that!”
The Boss is delighted to be paying one lucky customer £11.5million, but he also gave him an invite to a Man Utd game, along with some wise advice! pic.twitter.com/SnKS201IzU
— Betfred (@Betfred) June 9, 2025
Record Breaker
This £11.5 million win trounced the previous best payout at Betfred, which was a £5.4 million win for Michael Clarke via a £1.40 spin of the King Kong Cashpots game.
“We thought it must have been a mistake at first, and then we started hugging each other when we realised it was real,” Clarke said.
“I just couldn’t stop crying, and there was no way I was going to go to sleep that night having won such an enormous amount of money.”
That prize-winning spin was made back in January 2023; seven months later, the 32-year-old and his new wife Sherelle were married at St James’s Park, the home of the couple’s beloved Newcastle United. Fred Done was in attendance.
The biggest win at a UK online casino came back in April 2021, when one player – known in the press only as Mr M – won a jaw-dropping £15.1 million while playing the Book of Atem: Wowpot slot at 32Red.
The winner was playing at 80p a spin when his luck came in. Mr M later remarked that he ‘had to Google how many zeros make up a million… just to be doubly sure.’
That payout trumped the previous six-year record held by John Heywood, an Afghanistan veteran who pouched £13.2 million via a spin of Mega Moolah back in October 2015.
That mammoth jackpot came courtesy of a 25p spin at Betway, with Heywood eschewing the trappings of the newly minted. Instead, his first big payment came in the form of a heart and lung transplant for his dad, who had been battling various ailments.
As for the biggest online casino payout made worldwide, that’s the £17.7 million landed by a Finnish man while playing the Mega Fortune slot back in 2013.
Although he chose to remain anonymous following his windfall, it’s known that the winner had staked just $0.25 – or 18 pence – on the spin that triggered the jackpot.
And the largest slot machine win at a land-based casino? A steady £25.3 million payout trousered by a Los Angeles man at the Excalibur Hotel in Las Vegas, thanks to the Megabucks game.