Players Could Lose Existing Bets as William Hill Casino Cuts Ties with Switzerland

It’s not every day that you expect to receive an email from your favourite online casino with bad news.

On the 28th of June, William Hill Casino customers in Switzerland didn’t receive their usual promotional mail, but they received shocking news instead.

Players were informed that as of midday on the 28th of June 2019, the casino would no longer be accepting Swiss players. Furthermore, their accounts would be shut and their bets would be void.

 Cutting Ties with Switzerland

In 2018, Switzerland passed a law that would prohibit their residents from playing at foreign online casinos as of the 1st of July 2019. This gave operators a little over a year to make the move that William Hill did ever so suddenly at the end of June.

The Swiss are active online gamblers with more than half of the adult population enjoying time at online casinos. Due to the wide number of languages used in the country, it opens up many options for players to choose from, but this is now illegal.

Most operators exited the Swiss market shortly after the law was passed in 2018, but William Hill decided to stick around until the last possible moment.

After receiving the news that they would no longer be able to play at William Hill Casino, players were obviously shocked, but the news that they would possibly lose their existing bets was upsetting.

William Hill simply stated that the move was made due to “regulatory reasons”. Most online casinos have a clause which allows them to cancel wagers and shut accounts as they see fit, but very few use it.

 Sorting Through Bets at William Hill

After the announcement was made to withdraw from Switzerland, a representative has stated that William Hill will be going through each bet to decide whether or not a pay out will be made.

“Our customer base in the country wasn't massive, however we obviously had a few ante-post bets that were knocking about that would have been affected by price changes, including the Ashleigh Barty one,” said a William Hill representative.

“Our director of trading (Terry Pattinson) said he would personally go through every ante-post bet from Switzerland. And where the price had changed to be beneficial to the customer, we would offer a relevant cash-out value.”

They also stated that “if the odds had drifted”, the bets are to be voided. This could mean that many customers could simply lose their current bets with little to no warning.

As the 1st of July deadline has already come and gone, there’s nothing that customers from Switzerland can do but wait to see whether or not they’ll receive any pay outs from William Hill.

Many players may be unhappy with the news, but they can rest assured that their accounts are not simply being scanned by an algorithm and will instead be personally assessed by Terry Pattinson himself.