Back In January this year, two UK based punters Gary Smeaton and Kris Shenton placed what they thought at the time was a reasonable bet on the sport of Rugby, that being a bet that the Salford Red Devils would finish in the top five teams at the end of the season in the Super League, and that the Man of Steel award winner would be Jackson Hastings.
The odds they managed to get from William Hill on the Salford Red Devils finishing in any the top five positions of the Super League were high at 25/1, and they paired Jackson Hastings in that double bet, and they secured odds on him of 8/1.
As luck would have it both of their predictions came in and they were chuffed to bits at the thought of picking up their winnings which they worked out to be a whopping £23,400.
However, when they wandered into their local betting shop at which they placed the bet, they were told that the bet wouldn’t be paid out as a winning double bet, but instead it would be paid out as two £50 single bets, which would see them winning just £1700 instead of their expected winnings of £23,400.
The reason William Hill declined to pay out that bet as a winning double was due to a rather obscure rule that bookie had in place which they called a “related contingency”.
A related contingency is when one part of a bet has a direct effect on the other part of a bet, and William Hill claim that as Jackson Hastings plays for the Salford Red Devils, they were not going to pay out their bet as a double.
The pair of punters have vowed to take William Hill to court if they have to, to get them to pay-out their winnings, for as far as they are concerned as the winner of the Man of Steel bet is decided by a secret vote by a team of adjudicators it couldn’t have had any bearing on the other part of the bet.
However, William Hill currently appear adamant that they are not going to budge and have suggested the pair approach IBAS, who are the Independent Betting Adjudication Service that William Hill have chosen to as their independent alternative dispute resolution service.
