If you like a flutter, the chances are that you’ll have done so in person at least once or twice in your life. Whether you’ve place a bet at your local betting shop or you’ve done so with an on-course bookmaker, in exchange for your money you’ll be given a slip of paper that signifies the bet that you’ve placed. Unless it is going to see you win hundreds of thousands of pounds or more if it wins, the chances are that you might be more than a little bit careless with said piecer of paper, opening up the chance that you might not keep a solid track of it.
As a result, it is not unheard of for people to lose their bet slip. If your wager turns out to be a winner, you will unquestionably want to find a way to do something about it so that you can claim the money that is rightfully yours. The good news is that you do have options, not the least of which is heading back into the betting shop and telling them that you’ve lost it. They’ll be able to search the system to see if it is on there, allowing you to claim it once you’ve filled out the necessary paperwork to do as much.
What To Do With Betting Shop Bets
When you place a bet in a physical betting shop, the person working behind the till will scan your betting slip so that an electronic copy of it can be stored on the system. The information that is given to the computer includes the stake and the odds that you received, with all of the associated calculations figured out. In other words, there is an electronic database of every bet that is placed with a bookmaker, allowing them to figure out what their exposure is over an event at any given moment.
On the database, bets can be searched according to the name of the horse, football team or event that it was placed on. Should you lose your betting slip, you will be able to go to your bookie of choice and fill in paperwork that will ask for as much information as possible. Even the likes of the rough time and date that you placed the bet can helpful in narrowing it down. If the bet is found on the system and the information that you have provided the bookie with matches what they have, you’ll be able to receive your payout.
What If You Placed The Bet At A Racecourse?
If you have placed your bet at a racecourse, things work in a similar way, provided you realise that you’ve lost your slip on the day. If that’s the case, your first port of call will be with the Betting Ring Manager on duty that day. They are independent of the bookmakers and work for the Administration of Gambling on Tracks Limited. They are there specifically to try to monitor and regular on-course betting, with at least one such person being present at a race meeting. Their main role is to allocate pitches and resolve disputes, which is what you’ll need them for.
If, for whatever reason, you’re unable to speak to the Betting Ring Manager on the day then the bad news is that your bet will most likely be lost forever. Across the course of a year, about 30 million bets are processed by bookies on the course. As a result, lost slips can’t be processed after the fact. This is different from an unclaimed winning slip, which you’ll be able to get the winnings from by writing to the AGT, who will forward your slip onto the on-course bookmaker. You have 30 days to do this, after which claims will be at the discretion of the bookie.
Claiming Someone Else’s Slip
It is important to note that it is actually illegal to claim someone else’s winning betting slip as your own. In 2014, Gary Bernard knew that the bet that he’d placed won £900 but didn’t have his slip. Aware that he could inform the bookie about it and they’d look on their system, he went into his bookmaker of choice and filled out the necessary paperwork. The bad news for him was that someone else had already claimed his winnings, leading to them being charged with fraud by false representation. Though the case was dismissed, Bernard took it to the civil court and won more than £1,000.
Of course, just because something is illegal doesn’t mean that people don’t try it on. Indeed, in some cases they even get away with it. When a woman called Chantelle in Australia posted a photo of her winning betting slip on Facebook, she didn’t think anything of it. When she went to cash it in, however, the bookmaker refused to payout because someone had already claimed the AU$825, which was about £384. Unaware that the slip contained a barcode that could be used on an automated machine to collect the cash, she missed out on her winnings.
Similarly, police officers in Sheffield released a CCTV image of a man that they wanted to speak to after someone dropped a winning betting slip at a Betfred branch. Someone else picked the slip up and cashed it in, walking out with the winnings. This was essentially seen as theft, which was why the Sheffield police began enquiries to try to find the man who basically stole someone else’s money. The image was released on Christmas Eve 2021, with the slip having been dropped and picked up earlier in the month.
It is not just in the same store that people can claim winnings illegally. The story of Paul Thomas is a curious one, with him having placed a £300 bet on the 15th of February 2020 on Tottenham Hotspur to beat Wolverhampton Wanderers, getting odds of 11/8. When he went in to collect his £700, he was refused it, with Coral citing the fact that it had already been collected in a branch in Dagenham. He was eventually paid his winnings, but the fact that someone else was initially able to collect them will be of a concern to many.