Rugby World Cup Final: Betfair customers rushing to back England with £1.8m matched since semi-final win

It's been a long wait for England rugby fans since their team's last shot at a Rugby World Cup and as the nation builds up to what is hopefully a historic day it's not just fans getting behind the team, with bettors on the Betfair Exchange heavily backing them all week to lift the cup for the first time in 16 years.

The Exchange has already seen £1.8m bet on England since last Saturday's upset semi-final win over the All Blacks and that is expected that to increase rapidly as we get closer to kick off and during the match if England start the way they did against New Zealand last week.

Currently two thirds of the money bet is on England, with the biggest bet seen this week, a £20,000 wager on England on Thursday, followed by £18,000 not long after that.

Betfair Spokeswoman Katie Baylis, said: "While England are now the big 4/9 favourites to lift the William Webb Ellis trophy, their journey to this point has been far from plain sailing and, after the 2015 World Cup where they failed to make it out of their pool in their own tournament, they were as big as 10/1 to win the 2019 edition.

"South Africa, however have fought even bigger odds to get to the position to win their third World Cup, having been 20/1 at the start of this year after a number of years of poor form. And of course the All Blacks went into the tournament as big favourites but were easily dispatched by England last week.

"An England win tomorrow would top off a huge year for English sport and we have hundreds of punters who backed an England Cricket World Cup/Rugby World Cup with fingers crossed for a huge day of celebration starting at around 11am tomorrow morning."