Paddy Power open-top bus celebrates Leicester City bettors

While the Leicester City players haven’t gone round town celebrating yet, there was a Paddy Power open-top bus for those who bet on the Foxes to win the League!

Paddy Power has a reputation (LINK) among online sportsbooks in the UK for liking a marketing stunt, so it should come as no surprise that the most remarkable sports story deserved a reaction by the Irish firm. The odds of Leicester City winning the league began at 5000-1, and stayed remarkably high for months. The Paddy Power open-top bus celebrated the punters smart enough to take those odds!

While few punters who bet on sport were foresighted enough to bet on Leicester ante-post, plenty took the chance to bet after the season had begun. In total, Paddy Power paid out more than £2 million to those who had bet on Leicester. It wasn’t a total disaster though: stakes on the favourites will have offset the loss to some extent, while the unpredictable season will have delighted bookies overall.

Paddy Power open-top bus was double decker of delighted punters

The lucky winners on the Paddy Power open-top bus included a 53 year-old from Somerset who wagered £20 when odds were still 2501.00 (2500/1). Most surprising of all: he isn’t even a Leicester fan, or at least he wasn’t until this season. As quoted in the Leicester Mercury, he “watched Leicester for about eight or nine games, and I thought ‘they’re going to win this’”. Now he’s considering getting a tattoo of the club badge!

The Paddy Power open-top bus wasn’t just punters, though it did have winners of as little as a few hundred pounds. It also featured former Leicester City captain Matt Elliot, a Jamie Vardy lookalike, and Paddy Power himself. There’s likely to be a slightly bigger welcome for the actual Leicester City open-top tour!