Bettors simultaneously love Manchester City’s chances of winning the Premier League and its chances of getting relegated

Here are two seemingly contradictory sentences that are both completely true. Manchester City is getting the most bets to win the Premier League. Manchester City is also getting the most bets to be relegated from the Premier League.

Yes, the four-time defending Premier League champions are getting a lot of action to be dropped to the Championship despite being just +150 to win the league for a fifth season in a row. Man City has gotten 18% of the Premier League winner bets at BetMGM and has also received 24% of the relegation bets.

The answer is simple but complicated. Bettors know that Manchester City is going to be a title contender again this season. But there’s also a sizable contingent of speculative bettors taking the chance that City is going to get hard by English regulators.

City is reportedly set for a September hearing regarding its over 100 violations of Premier League financial rules. City is accused of not providing the league with accurate financial data. The club is owned by Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed Al Nahyan, the deputy prime minister of the United Arab Emirates. The country’s role in financing the club is at the heart of the dispute.

The goal is for any penalties for City’s breaches to be announced by the end of the season. Relegation bettors are taking a flier that those penalties will be a significant enough points deduction to knock City from the top of the table to the bottom three.

That doesn’t seem all that likely. Especially compared to the odds City now has of being relegated. Man City is now down to +1000 to get relegated thanks to all the action. Only 10 teams have lower odds to get relegated.

Outside of City, Arsenal is the most-bet team to win the Premier League. The Gunners are +165 to win the league ahead of Liverpool at +650. No one else has odds better than +1600 (Chelsea) and both Manchester United and Tottenham are at +2000.

At the bottom of the table, Leicester City and Ipswich Town have better than even odds to get relegated. Leicester is the favorite at -225, while Ipswich Town is at -110. Based on the odds, Southampton (+100) is the other team that will be relegated at the end of the season. All three of those teams came up from the Championship over the summer.