Betting Demand Too Much for Ladbrokes Online

Payments slowed down by Grand National and epic football events Along with reports that the Ladbrokes betting sites went down temporarily earlier this week came the explanation that this happened due to the confluence of Grand National horse racing and the Scottish and English FA Cup football semi-finals, which saw punters crowd the site and slow down its payouts. According to an internet sports gambler, “I placed a winning bet on Saturday and had it settled only 24-and-a-half hours after the event. Normally, bets are settled with the hour, even on the big days. Many clients need their return to continue betting, so the knock-on effect would have been huge.” Still, not all payments were delayed, said David Williams, a spokesperson for Ladbrokes, explaining: “Only a very small proportion of our customers were affected, less than one percent. We pride ourselves on providing a market-leading customer ­experience and apologise to those affected. "Along with several of our competitors we experienced some technical problems on Grand National day due to the very high volume of traffic.” It has also been specified that over GBP 200 million of bets were placed on the Grand National horse race, and that this did not affect only Ladbrokes. For example, Paddy Power spokesman Darren Haines stated: “It was the equivalent of 2000 people trying to get into a betting shop at the same time;” whereas Betfair spokesmen revealed: “We had some ­difficulties with payments and withdrawals as the volume was significantly up on last year.”