in his 2017 match against Conor McGregor. The £1 million wager is tied for the third-largest bet in Betfair’s history, behind £1.1 million bet on tennis player Rafael Nadal in the 2010 French Open, and slightly more than £1 million bet on Floyd Mayweather Jr. And it’s much better than the 10% chance of Trump winning according to FiveThirtyEight. That’s slightly better odds for Trump than the 2-to-1 odds last week. Oddsmakers put Biden’s chance of winning at 65%, and Trump’s chances at 35%.
They would win a £540,000 ($696,170) profit on top of getting the original £1 million wager returned. The identity of the bettor, who placed the wager on October 29, is not known.
But wagering on the election in the United Kingdom’s legal betting market is soaring, setting up the US vote to be the most-bet-upon event in history. US gamblers are not allowed to place legal wagers on the election, even as legal sports wagering spreads across much of the country thanks to a 2018 Supreme Court ruling. Someone has placed a £1 million, or $1.29 million, bet on Biden to be the next president on the Betfair Exchange, the world’s largest online betting exchange, where gamblers find other gamblers who match their wagers. Joe Biden’s biggest fan could be a bettor in the United Kingdom.
