What Is The Maximum a Bookmaker Will Payout?

The small stake big return bet is the dream of many punters – hence the popularity of the Lucky 15 bets in horse racing and the wonderful football acca. Hitting four out of four reasonably priced winners in a Lucky 15 or finally landing that elusive 13-fold on the weekend football action will all but guarantee a handsome payout.

However, in the case of the most spectacular bets, exactly how big this windfall is may depend upon the Maximum Payout of the bookmaker with whom you place the bet.

Why Do Maximum Payouts Vary?

Not all Maximum Payouts are created equally in the online bookmaking world. Far from it, in fact, with the Maximum Payout varying from one bookmaker to the next, between individual sports with the same bookmaker, and across different markets within the same sport.

Varying Maximum Payouts Between Bookmakers

The rule of thumb here is – the bigger the bookmaker, the bigger the Maximum Payout. When determining their Maximum Payout, bookmakers must strike a balance between providing an attractive offer for customers and not placing their business at risk.

To take an extreme example. Consider your local independent one-shop high-street bookmaker, who may take £10,000 in bets on a busy Saturday. Offering a Maximum Payout of £2m on a football acca would be way too risky for this operator. Whilst possible/probable that no punter would ever be lucky enough to hit this amount – if they did, the company would likely go out of business. In contrast, a major online bookmaker, with turnover in the millions rather than the tens of thousands, is far better placed to withstand such a hit.

Varying Maximum Payouts Between Sports

The reason Maximum Payouts vary across sports is also fairly easy to understand. You will find the biggest Maximum Payouts on the highest profile sports, e.g. Premier League football and UK horseracing. Bookmakers are far more willing to take on higher risks in these events for two reasons.

The first is the high overall turnover on the sport, which should hopefully help balance the books in the event of a big win.

Secondly, these top-level events are (almost) guaranteed to play out legitimately, i.e. without the influence of individuals attempting to influence or fix the result. Lower league football or minority sports don’t possess the same level of security.

Again, taking an extreme example, any bookmaker offering a £2m payout on the Amateur Staffordshire County Senior League would likely soon find themselves out of business – it certainly isn’t beyond the realms of possibility that the unpaid playing personnel would collude to fix results to land an outrageous bet.

Varying Maximum Payouts Between Markets

The reasons for this are manifold and vary from sport to sport. Taking Premier League football as an example, William Hill offers a Maximum Payout of £2m on Match Results and outright winner markets. However, if you wish to back a specific Brazilian footballer to pick up a card in a game, your winnings are restricted to £100,000. This serves as a solid example of a bookmaker attempting to provide value without leaving themselves open to exploitation.

How Much Do Maximum Payouts vary Between Sports?

Quite a lot, as it happens. The table below shows the Maximum Payouts offered by William Hill across a selection of sports.

How Much Do Maximum Payouts vary Between Bookmakers

As explained above, the biggest online bookmakers are in a position to offer higher Maximum Payout levels. However, that doesn’t mean the leading operators agree on how high those levels should be. The table below shows the Maximum Payouts for the most popular betting sports of horse racing and football across seven leading companies.

Maximum Payout: Important to Be Aware Of

Unless you truly are a punting genius, you probably won't land a monstrous payout very often. But hey, you only need to do it once, right? To ensure your big win is truly life-changing, always place your bets with a bookmaker offering the maximum potential value.

One thing to note is that some bookmakers will accept a bet with the potential to exceed their Maximum Payout. However, even if you receive a 27-fold bet slip which states that your potential winnings are £14,000,000, you will still “only” receive the Maximum Payout of that bookmaker if successful – which, as we can see in the above table, is likely to be £2,000,000 at best.

The best advice here is - never to place an acca bet with the potential to exceed the Maximum Payout. Instead, do one of two things:

• Reduce your stake until the potential returns drop to the Maximum Payout level. Why risk £5 in pursuit of £2million if you only need to risk £2
• Remove selections from your bet until the potential returns drop to the Maximum Payout level. The fewer selections you have, the more likely you are to win. Selections which take the payout above the maximum level increase your chance of losing with no potential upside due to the payout cap.

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