???? EARLY PAYOUT! ????
Liverpool beat Man City 3-1 to win the Community Shield!
After that result, we are paying out on Liverpool to win the 2022/23 Premier League title. (T&Cs apply.) pic.twitter.com/e1M2ycOWUC
— Paddy Power (@paddypower) July 30, 2022
Liverpool won the Premier League for the first time in the 2019-2020 campaign, and although Man City reclaimed the title the two years after, Liverpool were very much in the running in the 2022-2023 campaign.
They finished in second place by a single point the year before, which meant they played Man City for the Community Shield before the next campaign began.
Liverpool won that game, lifting the Community Shield after a confident 3-1 win over the reigning champions, and for Paddy Power, that was enough to decide the whole competition.
They were well prepared for their early payout stunt too, even turning up at the King Power Stadium where the match was held with the announcement plastered all over their ad board vehicles.
Not a single game had been played in the 2022-2023 campaign, not even a single ball had been kicked, and Paddy Power paid out all single outright bets on Liverpool.
At the time, Liverpool were 2/1 second favourites behind Man City at 4/7, so you could argue that it wasn’t a huge gamble, but in hindsight, it was a costly one.
At the time, a Paddy Power spokesman said:
“Some say the Community Shield is just a glorified friendly – but you won’t hear that at Paddy Power.”
“Oh no, we take the traditional curtain raiser so seriously that we’ve decided to be ultra-generous and hit the big red button marked ‘Pay Out‘ to punters who backed Liverpool to win the 2022/23 Premier League title prior to them beating Man City at the King Power today.”
“In the very unlikely event that we’ve called this wrong we’ll end up with some very expensive pie on our faces.”
It reportedly cost them into the hundreds of thousands of pounds, so it was indeed some very expensive pie.
Liverpool had a luke-warm season at best, and at several points they went 4 games in a row without a win, so they never looked like challenging for the top spot. They bumped around between 10th and 6th all season, with their greatest achievement being an unexpected 7-0 thrashing of Manchester United.
Anyone backing Liverpool pre-season got off very lightly if they made their bet with Paddy Power.
After their Community Shield defeat, City plyers and fans were goaded with the news of Paddy Power’s early payout on Liverpool as they left the stadium – the bookie even had placards and big posters advertising what they had done.
Well City got their own back and more.
Not only did they go on to win the league, but they won the FA Cup and the Champions League too, the first team to win the treble since Manchester United’s celebrated effort in 1999. United did it with more style though.