A few months ago, a curious trend allegedly emerged in the Nigerian sports betting industry: Sportybet, a prominent operator, began blocking some of its customers’ accounts. Ordinarily, this would be no cause for concern.
Still, these customers have unpaid winnings and unprocessed withdrawals allegedly totalling over N1 billion, a sum the company attempts to evade paying fraudulently.
These customers have neither committed any infraction against the company nor breached its rules. They are everyday customers who have played, won money, and been denied their winnings by Sportybet.
For some customers, Sportybet outrightly refuses to process their withdrawals, after which it subsequently closes or blocks their accounts. For others, their bets are settled as losses even before the events are over, and the scorelines say otherwise.
Others are stalled by new KYC requests even though these customers are already verified users, and after they provide the requested documentation, they never hear back from Sportybet. Ever again. Subsequently, the company blocks the account.
On Saturday, April 13th, and Sunday, April 14th, multiple users reported being unable to withdraw their winnings, from big personality Punter Kennyblaze, whose N154 million win was deemed “no sufficient amount to withdraw”, to others who were met with the same error message.
For hugely popular users with hundreds of thousands of X followers, Sportybet promptly moves to resolve the problem publicly. But for the other customers whom the company collectively owes over N1 billion, there’s been no move to rectify the situation, respond to their grievances, or pay what is owed despite contacting them.
It is unclear if Sportybet is in financial trouble. Users are left questioning the cause of unfairly, unethically, and fraudulently denying Nigerians their rightful winnings and then shutting down their accounts, even when they still have money in those accounts.
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