It would be fair to say that the majority of the adult Western world has at least dabbled in a bit of gambling before. Be it buying a scratch card from the local shop or playing in some high-stakes poker games, most people have engaged in a bit of gambling. But, of all of those part-time and professional gambles, there are a few who stand out above the rest: those who have won huge sums of cash.
Here, we shall be looking at some of the biggest winners of all time from the lottery, casino, and sports betting scene, marking how grand their wins truly were.
The Biggest Upset in Sports History
If you’re a big sports fan, you’ll know that the English Premier League is one of the most competitive sports leagues in the world, with several champion contenders battling it out for the title every year. But, in the 2015/16 season, none of the top-six, top-ten, or even top-15 clubs tipped to win the league could do it.
Having done the next to impossible of escaping relegation, having been bottom of the league at Christmas in the season before, Leicester City defied the 5000/1 odds placed on them by Sportsbooks and went on to the Premier League. People who placed Leicester down as somewhat of a joke bet at the start of the season pulled in a whopping £100,000, with the collective bookmakers forking out their biggest loss in British history on a single market – reported by The Telegraph to be £25 million – to lucky punters.
The Notorious Millionaire Maker
With the rise of online casinos came the rise of progressive slot games, which pool together money across many operators to offer an ever-increasing jackpot to spinners lucky enough to unlock it. Many of these progressive slots offer large sums of cash for their mega winners, but none more so than Microgaming creation Mega Moolah.
Nicknamed “The Millionaire Maker,” Mega Moolah holds the world record for the highest amount ever won on a slot game, per mega-moolah.online, at a whopping £13 million. But the wins didn’t stop there. The reason behind the game’s nickname is simple; whenever the mega jackpot is won, the mega pot resets to 1 million – guaranteeing to make the next winner a millionaire too.
The Massive Powerball Wins
Back at the start of 2016, something truly spectacular occurred. The Powerball jackpot rose all the way to $1.6 billion, ushering in a spending spree of people hoping to win the massive sum of money. Beating the reported 292,200,000/1 odds by picking the combination of 4, 8, 19, 27, 34, and Powerball 10, per USA Today, three people won the Powerball jackpot and split the money between them.
With their individual wins at just over $533.33 million, the record lottery winner stands as a woman from Massachusetts. In August 2017, one Mavis Wanczyk claimed the $758.7 million Powerball win, and with it, the record for a single-ticket lottery win, according to The Guardian.
Overall, the single win record here stands with the mighty 2017 win of $758.7 million, but who knows, it might not be long before someone eclipses that record or any of the other records lauded here.
