Beating the bookies

Paddy Power loses a court battle over a £1M prize it refused to pay out

A gardener who was told she had won more than £1 million from an online Paddy Power game but was only paid around £20,000 has won a High Court case over her winnings.

Corrine Durber, from Gloucestershire, played the Wild Hatter game in October 2020 which was described as a combination of a fruit machine and a wheel of fortune style game with two parts.

After moving to the second part and spinning the jackpot wheel, Mrs Durber’s iPad Screen displayed she had won the “Monster Jackpot”, which was stated as £1,097,132.71 on the day she played.

However, she was only paid £20,265.14 and told she had won the smaller “Daily Jackpot”, with the difference attributed to an error with the game’s display as it had been mal-programmed and pointed to the wrong prize.

Mrs Durber sued PPB Entertainment Limited, which trades as Paddy Power and Betfair, for breach of contract and for the rest of her winnings, based on what she was shown on screen.

And in a judgment on Wednesday, Mr Justice Ritchie granted summary judgment in her favour, meaning she won her case without a trial.

PPB had said that the outcome was determined by a random number generator, which had said she had only won the daily jackpot, but an error affected the animations of the game and showed her the wrong result.

Mr Justice Ritchie said that the idea of ‘what you see is what you get’ was “central” to the game.

He continued in a 62-page ruling: “Objectively, customers would want and expect that what was to be shown to them on screen to be accurate and correct.

“The same expectation probably applies when customers go into a physical casino and play roulette.

“They expect the house to pay out on the roulette wheel if they bet on number 13 and the ball lands on number 13.”

The judge found that the result from the random number generator was different from the result on screen due to human error in mapping the software, which had affected 14 plays over 48 days.

He also said: “When a trader puts all the risk on a consumer for its own recklessness, negligence, errors, inadequate digital services and inadequate testing, that appears onerous to me.”

Mrs Durber said after the decision: “As you can imagine, I’m so relieved and happy that the judge has confirmed I fairly and squarely won £1 million from Paddy Power.

“But why couldn’t Paddy Power pay-up straight away instead of putting me through this legal torment?

“I will never bet with them ever again, and I advise others to be very careful too.”

She added that Paddy Power had “tried their very best to deny me my rightful winnings”.

“What’s the point in betting if betting companies like Paddy Power won’t pay-up when someone wins a big jackpot?”

Following the ruling, a spokesperson for Flutter UKI, which owns Paddy Power, said: “Every week tens of thousands of customers win with Paddy Power, including an individual who received a £5.7 million jackpot just one year ago.

“We always strive to provide the best customer experience possible and pride ourselves on fairness.

“We deeply regret this unfortunate case and are reviewing the judgment.”

Published: 05/03/2025 by Radio NewsHub