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If a bookmaker paid out a season-long bet before the occurence actually happened, do they have any recourse if the bet ends up as a loser?
Is this Paddy Power’s Stoke payout? Haha.
As far as I’m aware they cannot reclaim. They decided to pay out
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No, David, I don’t believe they do.
Paddy Power don’t look to have done too well out of their pre-event returns this year, not least with Manchester United failing to win the FA Cup.
Actually it was a racing bet – Hayley Turner not to ride 100 winners in 2009 – 4/5 with Stan James. They very generously paid out last week but with talk of Hayley Turner returning to the saddle I was just wondering.
- Total Posts 17716
Actually it was a racing bet – Hayley Turner not to ride 100 winners in 2009 – 4/5 with Stan James. They very generously paid out last week but with talk of Hayley Turner returning to the saddle I was just wondering.
I think what you should do just be on the safe side is give me half the money and if they want it back it won’t hit your pocket so hard
If a bookmaker paid out a season-long bet before the occurence actually happened, do they have any recourse if the bet ends up as a loser?
PP have shops in Ireland, Northern Ireland and Great Britain, and run their offshore operation from the Isle of Man, so potentially you’re looking at any of those four related, but not necessarily identical, sets of governing law.
Where English law applied though, I would say they could not recover an early payout initiated by them and accepted by the punter.
I think the legal analysis of what happens in such a case is quite simple and has nothing to do with the complexities of mistake, frustration, void or illegal contracts, or even the repeal with effect from 1 September 2007 of the statutory provisions which previously prevented enforcement of gambling contracts.
In legal terms I think what happens in such a case is that the bookie offers to create a second contract with the punter – “in consideration of you agreeing to tear up today our earlier wagering contract due to be decided 8 months hence, I will pay you a sum equal to the sum you would have received had you won under that earlier contract.”
If the punter accepts, I think the element of acceleration on both sides (particularly in these uncertain times) will constitute sufficient consideration to establish it as an enforceable contract.
This means no danger of the early payout subsquently being claimed to have been a gift and so to have been capable of being clawed-back by the bookie, any future liquidator of the bookie, etc on the one hand – or on the other hand, any future receiver in bankruptcy of the punter (who for example might feel miffed that the punter had received and spent the proceeds early whereas had they stayed with the original date those proceeds might have gone to benefit of the punter’s creditors).
On this "second contract" analysis, the original wager dies when the payment is made so whatever Hayley does next is irrelevant.
The reason I favour this “second contract” analysis is that it provides also a cleaner view when it comes to the obverse position.
If what was happening is that some term of the original wager was being activated by Hayley’s indisposition, then you would have issues of either bookie or punter being able to force on the other early settlement (eg the punter being able to force early payout by the bookie on the bet as described, or the bookie being able to declare early loss to a punter who might have taken the reverse bet and backed her to achieve 100-plus winners).
Its the need for agreement on both sides to early termination of the wager that points to a second contract.
best regards
wit
Given that it seems a ‘policy decision’ rather than an error then I would presume the payout would be expected to stand.
I can’t see that it would have cost the bookmaker huge sums and they have taken a close-out position on the bet.Rob
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