Online sportsbook could face litigaton fom punters

Peter Lord and Graeme White, reportedly two Australian-based directors of the Canbet online sports book, could be facing lawsuits as angry and frustrated punters try to recover their account balances, allegedly frozen for the past three months due to the company finding itself in financial difficulties.

The UK-licensed sports book said earlier this year that the enterprise had hoped to secure additional funding or at least a rescue package after principal investor Delta – an Indian plc – declined to provide re-financing.

After initially claiming that IT problems had impacted player payments (a claim that has been made all too often by failing online gambling companies) Canbet eventually admitted it was experiencing financial problems, but promised to recover and pay out all owed players by end January, undertaking to either raise cash or sell assets in order to do so.

The company stopped taking deposits in the same month, and most recently has apologised to players for not being able to honour its promise of payment in January.

That does not seem to have placated a number of punters, who are now threatening litigation.