Bookmaker owes punter £900,000 after huge bet on Grand National wins

One very fortunate person is due a £900,000 payout from a bookmaker after they scored big win at the Grand National.

I Am Maximus became the first horse since Red Rum to regain the Grand National after winning in 2024 and coming second last year, so he was going to be one of the favourites for victory.

Someone ended up being so confident of it that they bet a whopping £100,000 on the right horse at odds of 8-1, meaning they're due to get £900,000 back in total.

The punter made a bet on the Grand National with bookmaker Fitzwilliam Sports, and ahead of the race Johnny Dineen confirmed it was the largest bet they'd ever had.

He said: “It’s the biggest bet we’ve ever taken, £100,000 at 8-1. It’s our biggest bet by a mile and we’ll have to try to trade some of it off in the ring. It goes without saying it would be a bad result for us!"

A bad result it turned out to be for the bookmaker, though not for I Am Maximus or the punter who backed the right horse on the big day.

That's the danger with gambling, whenever a bet is made someone is going to win and somebody is going to lose, in this case the person making the bet has won big but the bookmaker will have taken a lot of money from people who backed a losing horse.

Still, someone who has £100,000 to bet on the Grand National must be having an absolute whale of a time knowing they've not only got their stake back but that amount many times over in their winnings.

Predicting this stuff is a difficult job as a supercomputer had been tipping Panic Attack to win, though it reckoned I Am Maximus would be the second most likely victor.

Here's hoping the lucky punter has no problems getting their winnings as in the past there have been people who won big that had a lot of problems actually getting their money.

In the end these things tend to be settled and there'll be plenty of other punters queuing up to put a bit of money on the next race.

While I Am Maximus has won the Grand National twice now there'll be plenty more races to come for people to bet on whether they choose the big favourites or decide they'd rather back the outsider on the off chance it pays out big.

This might have been one of the biggest bets the Grand National has ever seen but there'll be more races, more bets and more people who end up losing their money in the hopes of becoming the big winner of the day.

Of course the biggest losers from the Grand National are the horses themselves, as Get On George and Gold Dancer were put down over the course of the event after being injured in the competition.