William Hill Disputes With Players After Alleged Jackpot Malfunction

Players at William Hill have been asked to return withdrawals after what the operator claims was a malfunction leading to accidental payouts totalling millions of pounds.

A glitch within William Hill’s Jackpot Drop opt-in pool left players believing they had hit the jackpot, with screenshots on social media platform X showing one player’s account balance displayed a current balance of £236,000, with another showing a balance of £142,000.

However, reports suggest some of these jackpot-winning accounts were locked under review and that the jackpot payouts have been removed. Evoke-owned William Hill is now said to be tracking down the winnings from players who had already cashed out their winnings prior to William Hill’s realisation of the alleged error.

One user, under the account name of Steven, posted about a friend of theirs receiving an email to say William Hill was refusing to pay out. The post read:

“A friend of mine won the daily jackpot on @WilliamHill yesterday, she watched the win come in, and now they’ve emailed her saying the machine malfunctioned and refusing to pay out, scumbag bastar%s, hope she takes them to the cleaners #boycot @WilliamHill.

“They have now sent emails saying all wins are void and we have 3 days to pay back the money, we have contacted ibas [the Independent Betting Adjudication Service] with all the screenshots and sent William Hill back the reference number saying we will await ibas decision, this is gonnae (sic) drag out.”

What the Ts and Cs say

Under Clause 8 of William Hill’s terms and conditions, titled “Errors, Malfunctions and Interruptions”, William Hill says it is not liable when certain things go wrong. This includes when “the odds or terms of a bet have been misstated as a result of automated data feed error, human mistake, error or omission in inputting the information or setting up, or administrative, operational or system failure.”

In the event of a malfunction, and where an account is credited with winnings were it not for that malfunction, William Hill says it will “have the right to void the relevant transaction and withhold the relevant winnings. This applies even if the relevant gambling product could have produced the same or similar amount of winnings without the intervention of the malfunction and it applies whether the malfunction was apparent to you or to us or not.”

However, players can still argue against the terms of the conditions and they may not necessarily be legally binding. Players have publicly said they will go through the courts in an attempt to claim their winnings. Betting.co.uk has reached out to William Hill for comment.

Previous cases

The dispute bears similarities to a previous case between Betfred and a player at its online casino. In 2021, the player was awarded £1.7 million by the High Court, after the operator had refused to pay out due to what it claimed was a “defect” in one of its games. A judge ruled one of the terms and conditions set out by Betfred in the game was “just not apt to cover the circumstances of this case at all.”

In another similar instance, the High Court ruled a player was due a £1 million jackpot from Paddy Power’s Wild Hatter game, after the Flutter Entertainment-owned brand initially only offered the player £200,000, claiming a technical error voided the full payout. The court found the game’s terms and conditions were too burdensome.