Leicester City title win would cost Ladbrokes €3.8m

Ladbrokes is set to pay out £3m (€3.8m) to punters, if Leicester City win the English Premiership next month, and it has also attacked the conduct of rival betting firms, particularly as regards last month’s Cheltenham Festival.

That was bookmakers’ worst Cheltenham’s ever. They had combined losses of £60m. In Ladbrokes’ first quarter trading update — its first since reporting annual losses of £43.2m in February — chief executive Jim Mullen, yesterday, called the festival “the worst in living memory”, taking the shine off what had been an encouraging quarter.

Ladbrokes grew net revenue by 10.6% in the first three months of the year, with UK retail net revenue up by 4% and digitial revenues ahead by 36.5%, on a year-on-year basis. The company was helped by wider football results and a successful Grand National, and management remains confident of meeting its full-year targets.