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One of the United Kingdom’s largest online bookmakers, Skybet, found itself caught up in a major controversy over the weekend following an odds error on its mobile phone app.
The app, which has been downloaded some 700,000 times to date, presented odds of 25-1 for a PSG win in extra time over Chelsea only to have the payout as 9-2 by Skybet. The bookmaker has since claimed the odds were a mistake.
Winnings for a £10 wager were reduced from £260 to £55 as a result.
Labour MP Graham Jones expressed outrage over Skybet’s decision Sunday: ‘This is outrageous. What would have happened if a rival firm had better odds but people chose Sky Bet because of the 25-1 odds? Customers would have lost out. You can’t change the price after the sale.
“Sky Bet are clearly a rip-off company who are willing to take their customers to the cleaners and deceive them. This is typical of the gambling industry.”
Sky Bet’s managing director Richard Flint insisted that customers should have known the posted odds were clearly an error: ‘Occasionally mistakes happen. In this case a wrong price was displayed for around three minutes, and a small number of customers bet at the incorrect odds.
“These odds were clearly wrong – we showed odds of 25-1 when the true odds and the odds displayed by all other bookmakers was 9-2. We settled at the correct odds.”
The app’s terms and conditions do state that Skybet reserves the right to ‘correct obvious errors and either settle bets at the correct odds or void bets’.
The company’s Twitter feed was awash with promos, essentially quashing any outrage that might be mounted on the popular social media site. Gambling911.com could not find a single complaint at the time this story was going to press.
- Alistair Prescott, Gambling911.com
