When a fault in evoke’s Jackpot Drop casino feature triggered incorrect payouts across its William Hill and 888 brands in March, the operator moved quickly to claw back funds. But with affected players giving interviews on national television and others taking to social media to find out if they have any legal recourse, the damage to the reputation of one of Britain’s most recognisable betting brands in William Hill may prove harder to recover than the money.
On 16 March, something went wrong inside evoke’s Jackpot Drop feature. Introduced in July 2025, the in-house-built game mechanic – designed to randomly drop one of six prizes during play after users opt to add an extra 10p per round in certain games – malfunctioned, and the results were extraordinary. Winners flooded social media with screenshots of six-figure prizes, complete with enthusiastic life-changing plans.
One player, postman Stephen Harvey, spoke to the BBC to say he thought he’d won more than £330,000 and hoped to buy a new house and car, but unfortunately the excitement was short-lived.
John Riding, a 76-year-old from Burnley, headed to his local William Hill branch to confirm his £285,700 jackpot, won while playing a game on his phone, only to be informed just days later that the win was null and void. The emotional rollercoaster from joy to despair saw him end up in hospital, with the BBC reporting he’d suffered a heart attack, which Riding attributed to the stress of the ordeal. He has since been discharged.
Meanwhile, Claire Ainsley, a mother of two, appeared on UK breakfast TV show Good Morning Britain on 21 April to describe how William Hill staff had initially confirmed her £1.2m jackpot win and said the funds would be in her bank account within 72 hours. Days later, with her account yet to be credited, she was informed the win was in fact a technical glitch and she would receive nothing.
When the story of life-changing prizes being awarded by mistake first broke, an evoke spokesperson told EGR in a statement that for a short period of time “funds were erroneously credited to some customer accounts that were not correctly generated through valid or properly functioning gameplay”.
The spokesperson added that the company was “in the process of retrieving the funds in line with our standard terms and conditions”.
Hitting the headlines
For Richard Williams, a lawyer at Keystone Law, the decision to offer affected players a partial settlement raises more questions than it does answers. “If you’re going to argue the malfunction clause was valid and it was incorporated, it seems odd you would give people financial compensation,” he says, noting the gesture is unlikely to achieve its intended effect. Offering a player who believes they are owed £1m a few thousand quid will do little to “deter them from bringing a claim”, he adds.
As for the reputational damage, Williams argues it runs far deeper than any payout dispute. “All of these things erode your faith in an operator as a consumer,” he says, “when you think you’ve reasonably won a jackpot on a game and then you’re told several days later, actually you won nothing at all.”
Conversely, Harry Stewart-Moore, a partner and disputes resolution lawyer at law firm Child & Child disagrees. He believes the majority of customers are “sticky” and there’s not yet enough public information to know whether the jackpot fiasco will translate into lasting reputational harm. “It’s fairly early doors,” he says.
“We just don’t know enough about what’s going on internally or how consumers are going to react to this.” And then there’s the issue of brand loyalty, particularly pertaining to William Hill, which can potentially absorb more than critics suggest. Together, it renders the full picture of how the affected player base ultimately responds as uncertain.
A wise man once said
What is less ambiguous, Stewart-Moore argues, is the nature of the media problem evoke now faces. Speaking on the 27 April episode of the AK Bets Podcast, he described the situation as “death by a thousand cuts” and pointed to the drip-feed coverage keeping the story alive in the media, weeks past the initial incident. “The story’s not gone away,” he said. “It keeps coming back and people are still interested because there’s so little information about it. There’s still quite a lot of curiosity about it.”
This might be true. The lack of clarity from evoke about what happened – besides the short statement – seems to have only exacerbated public curiosity. Rather than getting ahead of the storm, the radio silence from the operator has allowed social media activity and each new affected player willing to speak to a journalist to keep the incident in the headlines. A 90-second clip of Ainsley appearing on Good Morning Britain has amassed 7.6 million views and counting on the show’s X account, on top of 265 reposts and 2,200 thousand likes.
Evoke’s lack of openness is in stark contrast to Super, then known as Superbet, after it found itself in a similar situation last year. In September 2025, thousands of customers of the Bucharest-based operator profited from a technical glitch from a game that saw them collectively win over €30m. As pointed out by former William Hill CEO Ralph Topping on LinkedIn, the difference in the handling of these two situations by each operator is chalk and cheese.
Super honoured all payments, with Topping noting that customers were not treated as “wallets with legs” and warning that evoke’s Jackpot Drop story will continue to be play out in the UK media. “Better to have been on the front foot in the first instance,” he wrote, before signing off with: “Superbet accepted responsibility. The story died quickly and, like UK bookmakers discovered after Dettori day [Franke Dettori rode all seven winners at Ascot in September 1996], I’m sure Superbet saw much of the payout recirculated back into the business.”
Elsewhere, in April 2021, a UK High Court ruled in favour of Andrew Green, who had been refused a £1.7m jackpot by Betfred due to a defect in its Frankie Dettori’s Magic Seven Blackjack game. The case lasted three years and Green was awarded his winnings, plus interest.
More recently, Paddy Power lost a five-year legal battle with gardener Corrine Durber after contesting a £1m jackpot win on the grounds of a technical error. The courts, it seems, have little sympathy for operators that hide behind weaknesses in their systems. And for evoke, the true nature of the PR and financial crisis remains to be seen.
Deal or no deal
Evoke confirmed in April that talks are underway with Bally’s Intralot over a possible £225m sale – and it’s here that the unresolved fallout from the Jackpot Drop error could have its most tangible commercial consequence. Keystone Law’s Williams believes any prospective buyer will need to look hard at what the malfunction could cost them in the future. An acquirer, he argues, will need to weigh up “whether there could be some claims and whether those claims might be successful, and therefore that might be worked into a price”, adding there could be a “claw back” on the agreed sum for the business if claimants are successful.
Beyond the financial exposure, he raises a broader brand dilemma: if consumers do begin to lose faith in William Hill and 888, and are vocal about it on social media, could that deter others from playing for fear they might not be paid out if they win big? Stewart-Moore notes: “Purchasers of big businesses, or any businesses really, don’t like litigation on the books. That adds a significant layer of complexity in these circumstances.”
For Bally’s Intralot, completing due diligence on an operator whose flagship brand is currently trending for the wrong reasons will require answers that evoke so far has shown little willingness to provide, at least publicly.
Until those answers come, uncertainty may hang over the deal as heavily as the possibility of long-term reputational damage.
The post The jackpot that never dropped: can evoke regain public trust after payout blunder? first appeared on EGR Intel.
When William Hill and 888’s Jackpot Drop feature incorrectly awarded some customers six- and seven-figure sums, the error sparked backlash and national media coverage. But with parent company evoke staying tight-lipped about the debacle, what is the fallout and potential reputational damage for these well-known brands?
The post The jackpot that never dropped: can evoke regain public trust after payout blunder? first appeared on EGR Intel.