Friday 9 July 2010

Money To Burn


I'm sure most of you read this already, but next time you have a bad day, think of this Anonymous person:

A William Hill betting customer who bravely staked a record 500,000 euros on Germany to beat Spain has lost his wager - the largest World Cup bet ever, after a late Carles Puyol goal saw Spain win the second semi-final last night.

William Hill spokesman Graham Sharpe said: “Not only did the 500,000 euro bet lose, but so did the 100,000 and 80,000 euro bets on Germany to win the tournament, and another 75,000 euro wager on them to get past Spain”

“Even though we have clients with £25,000 and £10,000 on Spain to win the World Cup we will be going into the Final celebrating the fact that Germany aren't there.”

“Germany losing that game made a difference of around £5million to us - it was almost certainly our best World Cup result ever. Now we'd like the Dutch to round off a fantastic tournament for us by beating Spain”

2 comments:

Joep said...

Seems like very small amounts for a company that had over 1 billion debt not even 2 years ago. How will you ever make that kind of money back if the largest stake ever on a world cup match is only 500k? Also, I find it hard to believe they are as happy as they claim, as they must have significant liabilities on Spain to win the world cup, since during the group stages they had a good arb open for quite a while on Spain to win the WC at 6.00.

Hopefully the Dutch will beat Spain in the final, so WH can use their profits to pay me the 5K that they stole from me. As if that's going to happen, sigh...

Anonymous said...

It's always unsavoury to hear the big bookies gloat about making money off people but by the rule of opposites in PR it probably means they're heading for a hiding.