Stake users complain on social media about voided NBA and college baseball bets
The cryptocurrency betting platform Stake is facing public criticism on social media after a small number of users alleged that some winning wagers had been voided. The accounts below originate from a single bettor on X (formerly Twitter) and have not been independently verified. A striking example was the high-profile story shared by one user on the social network X (formerly Twitter), where he described his unfortunate experience: in just one month the bookmaker refused to pay him more than $3.3K. As justification, the operator used excuses about system bugs and referred to internal regulations.
Controversial Live Bet Cancellation
On March 3, the affected user posted a screenshot of his bet history for an NBA basketball match between the Golden State Warriors and the Los Angeles Clippers. In the middle of the fourth quarter, when the scoreboard showed 86:92, the bet on the Clippers' victory suddenly received the status of a refund. The player had risked $1.2K, and his potential net profit was a solid $1.8K.
Stake support did not take long to respond. Representatives of the platform stated that their data provider had allegedly experienced a brief technical failure (between 04:45:07 and 04:46:49 UTC), which caused incorrect odds to appear in the betting line. By an unfortunate coincidence, the user's bet was placed exactly at 04:46:17 UTC, landing directly in that "faulty" time window.
The bettor described the cancellations as unfair in his posts. He emphasised that the bet was cancelled exactly when his team was confidently leading the game. After the incident, the player began looking for a lawyer to pursue legal action and even publicly tagged Ed Craven - the co-founder of Stake - strongly criticising the transparency and fairness of his business.
Rulebook Loopholes: The Match That "Didn't Happen"
This was far from the only case. Earlier, on February 16, the same client complained about a strange settlement regarding a college league baseball match between the University of Oklahoma and Texas Christian University (TCU). He placed almost $1.5K on Oklahoma with a handicap of -8.5 at odds of 2.00. The game ended in a crushing victory - 12:2 in favor of the favourite - easily covering the spread. However, Stake once again cancelled the win and simply issued a refund.
This time the support service relied on a specific clause in the rules. According to them, for handicap markets to be valid, a baseball game must last the full 9 innings. Since the referees stopped the game early in the 7th inning due to the so-called "mercy rule" (a clear advantage by one team), Stake declared the event void.
The furious user pointed out that competing bookmakers settled similar bets as winning without any issues. In his opinion, the crypto sportsbook applies its rule clauses inconsistently with how other operators settled similar markets. Stake has not publicly commented on the individual cases at the time of writing.
I had the same crap last month. I placed a 5-leg accumulator, the last one hits with huge odds! And what do you think? “Technical error in odds” on one match. They simply canceled the win and returned the stake. I contacted support - they told me to get lost.
Guys, you don’t even read the rules and then start whining. The 9-innings rule in baseball is written into almost every sportsbook - that’s standard. But the NBA situation really looks shady, the support team is clearly screwing people over.
The bookie has gone downhill. They used to process withdrawals fine, but now they’ll choke over pennies. Never bet there, guys!