[00:00] These are 10 of the craziest World Cup bets that actually went on to win.
[00:14] From tiny fakes, they returned a combined total of £3.5 million. And many of them are hard to believe. Starting with a £1 accumulator bet placed on the World Cup in Russia. A 36-year-old woman from Sussex called Liz placed a £1 accumulator bet on a series of 6 results,
[00:31] with a 0.0004% chance of actually winning. She had Spain beat Morocco to draw at 16-1, Brazil and Colombia to draw at 11-4,
[00:43] Croatia to beat Iceland at 16-4, Sweden to beat Mexico at 10-3, and incredibly, South Korea to beat Germany at a huge 25-1. Now to seal the deal, she just needed France at 6-1 to win the whole tournament.
[00:57] So when Croatia knocked out England in the semis, it was only them to beat. And that was when Kylian Mbappe stepped up. And this is one pound Acker bet landed over 250,000 to 1, winning her 251,386.50 to be precise.
[01:19] Next up is a bet that was truly bizarre. It left a bad taste in the mouth and not just for the butler. Because in the 2014 World Cup in Brazil, before the tournament, a Norwegian called Thomas went on to Betzen
[01:33] and decided that all of the usual markets, top scorers and outright winners, weren't offering any kind of value. With only 32 Coloma or around £3.70 to play with, he wanted to sink his teeth into something much more juicy.
[01:47] So he faked all of it on a bet with odds of 175 to 1. On the Liverpool and Uruguay striker Luis Suarez fighting someone for the third time. Now fast forward to Uruguay's final group game with Italy.
[02:01] And in the 81st minute, with everything on the line for both teams, this happened. Now what's he saying? He's saying he's been bitten. Suarez bit Italian defender Giorgio Cellini. Moments later, Uruguay scored, knocking Italy out of the tournament, for which they haven't qualified since.
[02:16] Now in Norway, Thomas missed all of this because he was asleep. So he woke up to discover that his £3 bet had won him a little under £700 thanks to one very hungry striker But it wasn the only person to beat the bookies at the World Cup that year The host Brazil had stormed through the group stage and with golden boy Neymar on course for golden boot they were looking odds on to go all the way So when Neymar
[02:41] was injured in the quarterfinal win against Colombia and ruled out for the rest of the tournament, some bears saw an opportunity, a very specific opportunity. According to Betfair's exchange, not one, not two, but three different bettors from Singapore
[02:56] backed Germany, not just to beat Brazil, but beat them 7-1, at odds of 999-1. They were the highest odds the betting platform would offer, and by the 8th-9th minute, it was 7-0 to Germany,
[03:10] which was close, but not a winner. But then came Chelsea's Oscar to make it 7-1. It was looked on for relations with 200 million heartbroken Brazilians, But the great news for our bettors, he turned their combined £8 stake into £8,184.52.
[03:28] Now back in 2022, the World Cup went to Qatar, meaning big money and bigger bets. The biggest of all was placed by the online streamer Trainwrecks TV. Now, love him or hate him, there's no denying this guy loves a bet, or ten.
[03:42] This time though, he went all in on a four-fold bet, betting £25,000 on four different group game results. France to beat Australia, Denmark to draw with Tunisia, Mexico to draw with Poland,
[03:56] and with three wins out of three, that left just one final but highly unlikely bet. Saudi Arabia to bag their first ever World Cup win by beating Lionel Messi's Argentina, who were unbeaten in 36 games.
[04:09] At 1-0 to Argentina, his bet looked to be going down the pound, but somehow the Saudis turned it around, and this is when this happened. His £25,000 stake won £1.3 million.
[04:25] Now, as I've highlighted before, it rarely pays to cash out with a bookmaker. However, there's always an exception for every rule, and this next bet was exactly that. Despite that early setback, Argentina made it to the World Cup final,
[04:38] and a bettor named Daniel Forte was watching with interest. He placed a $26 parlay bet across multiple sports and events that needed one final leg to land it.
[04:50] If it did, it would win him $557,000. The trouble was that that result was for Argentina to lose to France and he wasn sure that it would actually happen It didn But luckily Daniel had cashed out just one leg before the final taking home an impressive
[05:11] $283,538. Now, compared to a bet struck in the 1966 World Cup, it was nothing, but we'll get to that one in just a second. First, some crazy World Cup bets that included Injury Can't Chaos and the naked French weather
[05:27] girl. Back in the year 2000, electrician Peter Edwards walked into a William Hill shop in Wales. He bet £50 that his grandson would play for his country. His wife said that it was a daft bet because his grandson was only a toddler at the time
[05:43] and the bookies thought they were laughing all the way to the bank so they offered him massive odds of £2,500 to run. Now, 13 years later, his grandson had become a professional footballer
[05:55] and pretty soon, aged just 16 years and 207 days, he made it onto the bench for Wales in the World Cup quarter-final against Belgium. It wasn't enough to win the bet, but in the 56th minute,
[06:07] Harry Wilson came off the bench winning his granddad a call, £125,000, enough money for early retirement. Next, an astonishing accumulator bet that the bookies didn't see coming.
[06:19] In November of 2016, over a single round of midweek games, a man from Coventry placed a multiple with 11 different selections, predicting the match result and over 2.5 goals markets across various World Cup qualifiers
[06:33] with combined odds of 820,728 to 1. Incredibly, that's a 0.0001218% chance of winning.
[06:47] And it was all going really well until Armenia needed to beat Montenegro. After 28 minutes they were 2-0 down In the second half they pulled back to 2-0 But it still wouldn't be enough Until the 93rd minute
[07:00] And in 9 seconds of injury time To go 3-2 to Armenia Meaning that our lucky punt Accounted 25 pence per Into £205,000 In 2012 meanwhile
[07:12] The French national team had been struggling So much so that it looked like They might not even qualify for the next World Cup In fact, 27-year-old weather girl and former model Doris Tillier was so convinced that they wouldn't,
[07:25] she promised to present the weather forecast without her clothes on if they managed to turn things around And then they did So she did too But now on to our biggest bet of all
[07:40] In 2010, the World Cup tournament was played in South Africa. Now, for many football fans, this will be remembered as the World Cup of Vuvuzelas. But if hearing those made your brain hurt, it was nothing next to the headache the bookies had coming here,
[07:54] thanks to a betting shot punter from Manchester. Before the tournament, he'd staked enormous £30,000 on a 14-1 double of Netherlands to win their group and David Villa of Spain to be the tournament's top scorer.
[08:08] Now, with Netherlands fulfilling their half of the deal, it was all down to Villa. Scoring five goals, Villa revived his team into the final, where they would need no one other than the Netherlands. As the tournament's top scorer, he wasn't alone.
[08:21] Whilst Thomas Müller and Diego Solan were also on five, their World Cups were over. but also on five was Netherlands' Wesley Schneider. If Schneider outscored Villa in the final, it would mean that it was game over for that particular bet.
[08:35] So by the second half of injury time, Villa was off the pitch and Schneider was pushing hard. Only the final whistle would seal the deal.
[08:49] Winning that betting shot punter, £424,000. But that final result was also predicted by a German octopus called Paul. Paul the octopus was challenged to predict all of Germany's games and the final two.
[09:03] Now once they've been eliminated all by choosing which of two food boxes to eat from, he got every prediction right. Bizarre. Now for our final incredible World Cup bet we head back to 1966.
[09:23] We all know what happened in that one. But did you know that a guy called Fred Dunn bet his entire week's salary of £25 on England to win? It was a bet from the heart rather than the head,
[09:37] as he would later go on to say. But 8-1, his £200 win changed his entire life and may well have had an impact on yours too. To some of an illegal bookmaker, this was a chance to go legit.
[09:50] So Fred Dunn set up his first betting shop and now he's a billionaire bookie and owns the brand Betfred. Of course, the chances are, if you try to take on the bookies at the World Cup, you'll lose, unless you're using a smart strategy like this one, shared here in the next video.
[10:04] Check it out.