Last Updated on 30 March 2022
An Australian betting enthusiast is suing the betting company BetEasy for $1.2 million in unpaid winnings. Renee Bell won a massive parlay bet in May this year and stood to win $1.44 million.
However, the operator where she placed the wager, BetEasy, paid out only $250,000 and is not willing to pay a cent more.
Maximum Daily Payouts
BetEasy’s people say that their decision to pay out only $250,000 was completely justified, and is something that all of their clients know and agree to. The betting operator says that $250,000 is their daily winnings limit and that the punter was made aware of this when she opened her betting account.
In the betting provider’s defence, which was filed on May 29 in the Supreme Court, BetEasy’s lawyers said that they clearly outlined in their terms and conditions that the bookmaker has a daily payout limit of $250,000.
They added that all punters that have a betting account with them are made aware of this when they open their accounts, and they subsequently agree to that condition before activating the account.
They concluded their defence by saying that Bell opened her account in August 2015 and that at that time this maximum daily payout limit was clearly outlined in the terms and conditions she accepted.
A CrownBet (BetEasy) Employee Opened Bell’s Account
Renee Bell begs to differ, though. In her reply to the court, she said that she at no time agreed to those terms and conditions. She claimed that her betting account was opened by a CrownBet (BetEasy was formerly known as CrownBet) employee and not herself.
She also said in her defence that in addition to not agreeing to the terms and conditions, she wasn’t made aware of the maximum daily payout limit by anyone and those conditions weren’t brought to her attention.
Monster Parlay
The Bell vs BetEasy legal battle is getting quite heated, and for good reason. The bet that Bell won was one of the largest winning wagers in Australian betting history and would have made her approximately $1.44 million richer.
The unlucky punter placed a total of $500 in multi-bets. The largest one of these was a $100 five-leg combo and it should have returned $1,260,748 were it not for BetEasy’s reluctance to pay out more than the daily winnings maximum.
In that parlay wager, Bell backed four horses to win their respective races on Saturday, May 19, 2018, and also tipped that West Coast was going to defeat Richmond at $1.92 on Sunday, May 20. All of her horses won and West Coast triumphed over Richmond, which meant that she had a massive winning bet.
The horses she backed were Jaminzah ($16), Praguematist ($4,80), Miss Iano ($9.50), and Marcel From Madrid ($9). These were all bred or part-owned by relatives of Ms Bell, so she must have been well-informed of their chances before she placed her bet.
Four Other Winning Bets
However, that massive $100 multi-bet wasn’t the only wager that Ms Bell placed. She also had four other wagers worth $100 each.
These were placed on the same four horses, but the punter used different combinations in each of the slips in which one of the horses was backed to win and the other three to place.
She spiced all of those parlays with an additional football match to take her potential returns to $182,447.
Unfair Terms and Conditions
If you are a punter, you can probably imagine how Renee Bell must have felt when she found out that all five of her bets were successful. Getting those four $100 bets was hard enough, but landing the $1.25 million five-leg parlay must have knocked Ms Bell off her feet.
However, BetEasy was there to spoil the fun. The betting company paid out only the daily maximum limit and nothing else. This meant that they only paid out $250,000 to Ms Bell and also returned her stake of $100.
To Ms Bell’s fury, they then cancelled her four other winning parlays and refunded the respective $400 worth of stakes. In essence, this means that only the largest parlay was taken into consideration, and the other four were immediately cancelled.
This might be extremely unfair, but it is in line with BetEasy’s terms and conditions which are published on their website. They say that all players who open an account with them agree to the terms and conditions of the site. The one that Ms Bell should have been informed about is:
“The maximum payout for a multi-bet for racing and sports or a combination of both is $250,000. It is your responsibility to ensure that it stakes according to the limits.”
The two clashing parties are scheduled to meet once again in the Supreme Court on November 13.
