• Most unusual bets in sports betting history

There are different types of bets. From regular home win-draw-away win to Asian handicaps, the world of sports betting is full of various kinds of wagers. The majority of punters, place their money on such bets, but there are a few people who seek very special bets. These wagers are mostly called novelty bets and are offered by some bookmakers such as Paddy Power, Ladbrokes, William Hill or Betsafe. The first of these betting operators, Irish bookmaker Paddy Power, is especially known for their interesting, often controversial novelty bets.

Most novelty bets, offered by mentioned above bookmakers, are connected with sport or social events. There are, however, sports bets and stakes for such wagers that are not typical ones. In this article, we will tell you about the most unusual, surprising and even shocking sports bets in the history of this type of gambling.

• Most unusual bets in football

There are hundreds of sports novelty bets offered by online bookmakers. The majority of them are football special bets. One such a bet was placed by a man called Adrian Hayward. Hayward was a Liverpool supporter and watched almost every Reds game at that time. He noticed that Xabi Alonso, who was a Liverpool player back then, tends to shoot from his own half quite often, and few times he came close to scoring such a long-distance goal. Hayward placed a bet for £200 at one of the bookmakers that the Spaniard will score such long-distance goal in that season and after Alonso scored an amazing 60m goal against Luton, he won an impressive £25,000.

Another example is probably the most famous football novelty bet in the recent years. Betsafe bookmaker, offered their customers a chance to bet with 175/1 odds that Luis Suarez, notorious football ‘vampire’, would bite again at the 2014 World Cup hosted in Brazil. The attacker had previously display such behaviour and the bookmaker though that it would be a good way of advertising. We all know how it ended. Suarez have bitten Italian defender Giorgio Chiellini and dozens of people won small fortunes on this bet.

• Roly-Poly Goalie ‘Pie-gate scandal’

The most recent example of an unusual sports bet is that of a ‘Pie-gate’, which is a football betting scandal that happened in England in 2017. Sutton United third-choice goalkeeper, Wayne Shaw allegedly fixed a bet during his team’s FA Cup game against Arsenal. Shaw gained a celebrity-like status earlier on, as his posture and age (45 at that time) did not match a typical athlete. Chubby goalkeeper was nicknamed The Roly-Poly Goalie by the British media and became a cult-figure among English football fans.

At some point, Sun bets, the online bookmaker that is owned by The Sun newspaper, offered a very unusual bet. They laid 8/1 odds on that during the match, Shaw would start eating a meat pie (or pastry as he claims). Few dozens of punters though it was a funny banter and placed their money on this novelty football bet. As it later turned out, around 81 minute of the game, Shaw became hungry and started munching on a meat pie. His teammates started laughing and all the cameras were focused on him.

This was the peak of his stardom. Unfortunately for him, he fell from the sky pretty fast, as the FA started an investigation on bet-fixing during a match and he was sacked by his club. The whole event was dubbed as a very controversial way of promoting both the bookmaker (who also sponsored the event, including Sutton’s kits and equipment) and the newspaper who had a very hot topic to write about. In the end, Shaw found another job...as a meat pie seller.

• Watch out what you are betting with...

If you are surprised at this point, you will be shocked when you hear about the things people use as the stake in their bets. Obviously, in contrast to the mentioned above examples, these are stories of people who made bets with each other, not with a professional betting operator such as online bookmaker. It is common knowledge that people in less-developed countries from Africa and some parts of Asia and South America are known for their gambling nature and often make bets on most outrageous things. They also bet on regular things, like sports, but there is nothing regular in the stakes they use in such sports bets.

Such was the case when two men from Uganda made a bet for the Arsenal against Manchester United game. It would be nothing particularly interesting at this point, were not for the stakes they used. The man who supported Arsenal put his house and the one who was a United fan, placed his car and...wife as the stake in the bet. The first man lost and he had to leave his house, together with his family of over eight people. We wonder what happened to the wife of the second man, did she stayed with him after he used her as the ‘stake’.

But such examples are not only a case in exotic, oriental countries. In France, a weather forecast journalist, Doria Tillier, was so sure that the France national football team would not progress to the 2014 World Cup in Brazil, that she bet her fellow friends in the studio, that she would strip on Live TV broadcast if Les Bleus somehow managed to overcome their 2:0 loss to Ukraine in their first leg of the World Cup Qualifiers play-off round. The French won 3:0 and poor Doria had to strip in front of millions of people. She was clever though, as she did that so far from the cameras and from such angles, that nobody saw anything.

• Horrible punishments after lost bets

If betting on Suarez to bite another player or using your wife as a stake in a bet, still did not surprise you, the below examples of unusuals bets will surely amaze you. One of the most popular way of punishing someone when he lost a bet is making him to get a tattoo of something he or she dislikes or simply something horrible. Such were the cases of a man who had to get an Andy Murray smiling face on his bottocks after Scottish tennis player proved him wrong and won the Wimbledon or numerous football fans who had to get a tattoo with the crest of their most hated clubs after a lost derby match bets.

Another example also comes from the world of football, but not popular all over the world Association Football (Soccer), but American Football. An American couple were watching a football game during which they drunk a considerable amount of alcohol. At some point, they agreed to a bet in which the supporter of the winning team, will have the right to use a taser on his spouse. The husband’s team won and he tasered his ‘shocked’ wife. This ended up pretty badly for both of them, as angered wife (who did not believe that he would actually taser her) called the police who arrested her husband. Talk about electrifying atmosphere during sports events, huh?