Leicester Fan Cashes Out £20 Bet on a Foxes Championship for £29,000

John Pryke takes home £29k from £20 on Leicester winning the league. The industry's biggest cash-out this season! pic.twitter.com/weycr6s4l3
— Ladbrokes (@Ladbrokes) March 4, 2016

What person in their right mind would have bet on a Leicester title last year? I mean, what were the chances of them winning? 5,000 to 1? Well, even if those weren't the chances, they were the actual odds for Ladbrokes betting company last summer when Leicester fan John Pryke placed a bet. That was enough to turn his £20 into a whopping £29,000. The man cashed out today.

An official end-of-season Premier League title for Leicester (with 10 games left in the season) would have given Pryke a whopping £100,000—that's £71,000 he could have won. And Leicester simply looks that promising this season. But don't call the man an idiot quite yet; Pryke's timing wasn't entirely uncalculated. I would make no small coincidence of the fact that he cashed out yesterday, the day before title contenders Arsenal and Tottenham Hotspur competed against each other, with Spurs on the verge of tying Leicester in the table. Most smart gamblers would have seen this as the right time to cut bait.

Pryke had this to say to the Press Association (via Mirror):

But in a fortunate swing of events for Leicester, and an unfortunate one for Pryke, Arsenal and Spurs tied in a thrilling 2-2 result today, and now Leicester are poised to gain three more points over a fairly weak Watford side. If they win, they'll be a clear five points ahead of Spurs, currently the No. 2 team. Pryke feels assured knowing that he's got another bet riding on the line:

"I've also backed Leicester to finish in the top four at 400/1, so I can enjoy the rest of season knowing I've got my winnings early," Pryke said. "£29,000 is a huge amount of money and I'd be silly ignore it. Not bad from £20."

UPDATE:

Ladbrokes announced via Twitter that someone had the same idea as Pryke, but beat him on their pre-match cash out, with an initial bet of £50 that paid out a whopping £72,000. There are no quotes from the lucky better, but I'm sure they'd be at least a little chagrined to know they missed out on a cool extra £19,000 that would have come if they simply waited out the results of today. (Leicester beat Watford 1-0.)

If he stuck it out the cash out now would have been £91k. Still a great bit of betting, congratulations! #LCFC pic.twitter.com/zg0QBJaMsr
— Ladbrokes (@Ladbrokes) March 5, 2016

Lordy lordy. Maybe it's time to start making wagers on Bournemouth's chances for next year…

[h/t @iamezekiel1_14]