William And Kate Pregnant? British Odds Makers Seem To Think So, So Do The Bettors

Are William and Kate pregnant? British bookmakers seem to think so: they’ve been getting so many bets in favor of a royal pregnancy that they’ve had to stop taking bets on the question in order to be able to make any money.

As The Express reports, Coral, one of countless online British book-making websites, had to suspend betting on their “Will William and Kate Announce a Pregnancy?” proposition. So many bets in favor came in that the odds were too awful to allow; they were 1:3 when Coral suspended betting. (For those who don’t understand betting, odds of 1:3 means that a £3 (about $3.86) bet would only win back an additional £1 (about $1.29). That’s hardly worth it for the bettor or the house.

Coral spokesperson John Hill said that it’s all but a sure thing at this point that William & Kate will be pregnant any minute now.

“This latest gamble suggests to us that Kate and William could be set to make an announcement soon that they are expecting a third child therefore we have pulled the plug on the market to allow the dust to settle.”

However, that doesn’t mean that the future of William and Kate’s family is off the table when it comes to betting. Coral and other odds makers (or “punters” as they’re called in the U.K.) are now taking bets on the sex of their next baby, even though they haven’t officially announced a pregnancy yet.

And in case you were wondering, odds are 10:11 that it will be a boy; that’s pretty mathematically close to the actual, scientific odds of a pregnancy resulting in a boy. According to CBC News, any one conception has 50/50 odds of producing a boy or a girl, but slightly more boys survive gestation and make it to birth.

Meanwhile, the sex of the as-yet-unannounced royal baby is not the only pregnancy question being considered by odds makers. Coral and other punters are also taking bets on Kate getting pregnant with twins (20:1) and triplets (150:1), according to Hello Magazine. In case you were wondering, British parenting magazine Twins crunched some numbers, and it turns out that the odds of a healthy, young British woman’s giving birth to multiples is 67:1 for any one pregnancy.

And of course, no discussion of pregnancy is complete without kicking around names, and British punters are taking action on those, too. Right now, popular and enduring British names like Alice (8:1), Victoria (8:1), Arthur (10:1), and Henry (10:1).

Of course, as of this writing, William and Kate have not officially announced that they’re expecting.

[Featured Image by STRMX2/AP Images]