There’s a common marketing slogan in sports betting: “Sweat the game, not the payout.” In other words, when dealing with legitimate sportsbooks and not some shady neighborhood bookie, gamblers shouldn’t have to worry about getting stiffed. Yet bettors say gaming operators aren’t always living up to that promise, and some industry officials agree. Bookmakers sometimes use a clause in their fine print as an “insurance plan,” as one top regulator put it, to get out of paying big winners — and multiple industry observers say the practice is increasing. That caveat nearly cost Christopher Kozak $127,420 recently, after Hard Rock Bet voided three successful long shot hockey wagers — involving bets on a host of NHL players being held scoreless in the same game — that he placed in Tennessee. The sportsbook, operated by the Seminole Tribe, notified him several days after the games in question that his payouts were an “obvious error,” and therefore he wasn’t owed anything beyond a refund. When he pushed back, Hard Rock sought to renegotiate the odds — “a slap in the face,” said Kozak, who shared screenshots of his bets, as well as his extensive correspondence with Hard Rock, with The Washington Post. The messages show company officials repeatedly declining to explain the nature of the “error” or what made it “obvious.”The company declined to answer questions from The Post. Then, last week — nearly two months after voiding Kozak’s bets and following questions from a reporter — it agreed to pay him in full. He had recently brought his complaint to the Tennessee Sports Wagering Council, though a company spokesperson said Hard Rock hadn’t been ordered to pay up. The Tennessee Sports Wagering Council declined to answer questions from The Post regarding Kozak’s case, how often sportsbooks are citing “obvious errors” to avoid paying customers and how the state determines what errors are and aren’t obvious. Virtually every U. S. sportsbook has similarly open-ended language in its terms and conditions. There’s consensus that bookmakers shouldn’t have to honor bets that take advantage of a “fat finger” input screw-up, such as listing the “over/under” point total of a football game as 500 instead of 50. (In such a case, any bettor would bet on fewer than 500 points being scored for a guaranteed win.) But increasingly, according to a half-dozen people who work with sportsbooks, operators are canceling winning bets that result from murkier types of bookmaking blunders, raising a philosophical debate that’s dividing regulators across the country. Many states give sportsbooks considerable leeway to void winning bets after the fact simply because their odds or lines were markedly out of sync with those offered by competitors. Some regulators, however, insist that, with few exceptions, a bet is a bet, no matter how badly an operator wishes to take it back.“We’re taking a hard line,” said David Rebuck, director of New Jersey’s Division of Gaming Enforcement.
All data is taken from the source: http://washingtonpost.com
Article Link: https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2024/01/17/sports-bets-errors-payouts/
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