Two sports bettors believed they were entitled to a $40,200 payout on a golf wager, but Nevada Gaming Control Board members voted to reverse their payouts.
Two sports bettors who stood to make $80,400 between them were scratching their heads Wednesday after the Nevada Gaming Control Board voted to reverse their payouts after the sportsbook that took the wagers said the originally posted odds on the bet had “obvious errors.”
Bret Tison and Melvin Fowler both placed $200 bets on Spanish golfer Joel Moscatel Nachshon to win the first round of the 2023 Fortinet Australian PGA Championship at the Royal Queensland Golf Club in Australia.
Using apps, Tison and Fowler placed live bets with Caesars Entertainment Inc.-owned William Hill Sportsbook on the first-round winner when they saw the +20000 longshot odds.
The $200 bets would have each paid $40,200 for a winning ticket.
At the time, Nachshon was 281st in world golf rankings and finished the tournament in seventh place with an 11-under-par score, but was first after the first round, tying the course record by shooting a 63.
“I’m doing this because I don’t want anybody else to go through what I went through,” Tison told board members in his 20-minute hearing.
Tison said he was flipping through television channels on Nov. 22, 2023, and came across the golf tournament and decided to place a bet, even though he had never bet on golf before.
He said Nachshon had what could have been the best round of his career, delivering what Tison thought was a big payday for him.
But when he kept checking his app, he soon discovered that William Hill had changed the odds on Nachshon’s win to +400, providing a payout of $1,000.
Tison took his patron dispute to the Control Board and had a hearing Jan. 9, 2024, with agent Jason Plum. The agent ruled in Tison’s favor that he be paid $40,200.
But 20 days later, William Hill appealed the ruling, setting a rehearing of the matter in October 2024.
Fowler had the same thing happen and in his Jan. 9, 2024, hearing, agent Brett Goff also ruled in favor to award him $40,200. The only difference in Tison’s and Fowler’s cases was that Fowler also wagered $300 on Nachshon with the +6500 odds that also were available.
William Hill said the posting of +20000 odds was an obvious error and that under the company’s betting terms, it says it can make changes when “odds or terms of a wager have been misquoted because of human or system error.”
Investigators tracked down what happened.
When Nachshon was added to the list of competitors, it was entered by the golf feed supplier as “Joel MOSCATEL NACHSHON” with all-capital letters for the middle and last names. The William Hill system interpreted the all-capitalized name as a new golfer and as a result offered long-shot odds. In essence, one golfer was listed twice, one with +6500 odds and the other with +20000 odds.
When the William Hill appeals reached the three-member Control Board on Wednesday, it was recommended by hearing examiner Augusta Massey that Tison be paid $1,000 and the $40,200 amount be reversed and that Fowler get $12,200 for one of his bets, but that the additional $28,000 be reversed.
Even though Tison and Fowler met their burden of proof before agents Plum and Goff and they recommended payment, Control Board members were swayed by the fact that odds and terms offered by William Hill were materially different from those offered in the general market and that “odds/terms offered at the time of the wager is placed are clearly incorrect given the probability of the event occurring.”
