Six years too late
William Hill will likely have to pay a $100,000 fine in Nevada after failing to report a technical issue for around six years. The Nevada Gaming Commission (NGC) is set to confirm the fine during its meeting on Thursday.
covering a period between 2015 and June 2021
The issue, which impacted around 50,000 Nevada wagers, relates to the operator’s technical operations between 2015 and June 2021. The Nevada Gaming Control Board (NGCB) has outlined the issues in a 12-page complaint.
The complaint explains that William Hill failed to properly alert authorities of an issue that led to the duplication of online users’ wagers. Customers allegedly notified William Hill of the issue, but the operator did not immediately make Nevada regulators aware.
An eventual resolution
Explaining how the technical error led to bet duplication, the complaint said: “The queue that holds the wagers would back up and a patron who placed an initial wager would see a processing message, become impatient, exit the application, and attempt the same wager again.”
eventually resolved the glitch in June 2021
Once the system became stable once more, every queue item would then process, including the multiple wager attempts. William Hill eventually resolved the glitch in June 2021 and has seen no duplication issues since then.
Nevada gambling law dictates that operators must report any such issues to regulators within three days. As William Hill failed to meet this remit, the NGCB has proposed a $100,000 fine.
A high volume of bets
The NGCB claims 55,000 bets were duplicated due to the error. About 42,000 of these wagers were losing bets, meaning William Hill erroneously received $1.3m. The operator has since returned all of that money to users. About 13,000 bets were successful, yielding $2m in winnings for users. All of these winnings have since been recouped by the sportsbook operator.
William Hill and its owner Caesars Entertainment have agreed to pay the $100,000 financial penalty for the wrongdoing. Onlookers expect the NGC to formally issue the penalty during its meeting on Thursday.