If you backed Liverpool to win the Premier League this season with either Paddy Power or Betfred, you might have be in for a surprise next time you log into your account.
Those two firms have paid out early on Arne Slot’s men winning the title… despite there still being ten more games of the campaign to go. But after their 2-0 beating of Manchester City on Sunday, which came 24 hours or so after nearest rivals Arsenal lost at home to West Ham, they made their decision to settle up.
🚨 EARLY PAYOUT 🚨
We’ve seen enough… Paddy Power are paying out EARLY on Liverpool to win the Premier League! 🏆
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— Paddy Power (@paddypower) February 14, 2025
So, if your account balance is a little higher than you were expecting, you know why!
Paddy Power have left their outright Premier League winner market open, so you can still wager on Liverpool – or any other side – to hoist the trophy, with only bets placed before February 22 settled early.
It could be a masterclass in PR or an absolute calamity. But then the Irish firm has a history of paying out early on outright bets. According to data from Online Bookies Offers, they’ve come a-cropper multiple times when they got their predictions so, so wrong.
Trumped at the Polls
Such as the weight of emotion ahead of the U.S. presidential election in 2016, that vote became one of the most bet-upon events in history.
For the most part, Hillary Clinton was the red-hot favourite, touching odds of 3/10 on at one point as Donald Trump, her Republican opponent, made a series of questionable claims and controversial comments.
So likely did a Clinton win seem that Paddy Power decided to settle up bets on the Democrat early, in a move which cost them around £800,000.
But worse was to come. Clinton became embroiled in an FBI scandal after it was revealed she had used a private email server to end official communications. She lost the trust of the voters, and Trump – as unlikely as it appeared – was sworn in as the 45th president of America.
And so Paddy Power had to pay out to Trump backers too, with their entire bill for the election coming to just shy of £5 million. So damaging was that to their finances, they even had to slash their expected earnings forecast for 2016 on the back of the own goal.
“We decided to put our neck on the line by paying out early on Hillary Clinton, but boy did we get it wrong,” a spokesperson for the firm commented.
“We’ve been well and truly thumped by Trump, with his victory leaving us with the biggest political payout in the company’s history and some very, very expensive egg on our faces.”
Tiger Tamed
You know Tiger Woods: 15-time major champion and one of the greatest golfers to ever pick up a club.
Whenever he was in contention to win a big tournament in his prime, there was just a certain inevitability that the Big Cat would get the job done.
And so when he romped into a four-shot lead with just a round to play at the 2009 PGA Championship, Tiger was ominously short with the bookies to add more silverware to his collection.
So much so, Paddy Power decided to settle up early… well, you can probably guess the rest.
Tiger, unusually for him, found the tough conditions at Hazeltine unmanageable on the final day of the tournament, shooting a three over par round of 75.
Others struggled too, but Y.E. Yang – an unheralded 150/1 Korean that had only won once on the PGA TOUR before, somehow got round in 70… enough to tame Tiger and clinch the only major title of his career.
It was a shock result that cost Paddy Power more than £1 million.
Premature Relegation
Not once but twice has Paddy Power paid out on Premier League sides to be relegated after just a few weeks of the season.
The first time came back in 2020/21, when the Irish firm predicted that Fulham – who had lost their opening three games – would be demoted to the Championship.
On this occasion, Paddy was right to be hasty as the Cottagers won only two of their opening 20 games of the campaign, ultimately finishing 18th and suffering immediate relegation back to the second tier.
But this season, Paddy Power made a bit of a hash of their decision to pay punters that had backed Everton to be relegated after just two games of the term.
Since sacking Sean Dyche, the Toffees have been on a solid run of W4 D2 L2 under David Moyes and are now comfortably clear of the Premier League dropzone.