Stats storage error during Illinois-Chicago State basketball game resulted in sportsbook refunds
Bettors discovered a state-maintenance bug that affected the final score and point spread of Saturday’s college basketball game, prompting some sportsbooks to pay winning bets for both teams.
The mistake happened at the end of the second half of State of Illinois–State of Chicago Saturday game. A throw-in was taken by Illinois State Strong Josiah with 49 seconds to play was mistakenly recorded as missed. Illinois, a favorite of 9.5 or 10 in most sportsbooks, won by nine – 80-71 – without counting free throws.
The Chicago State athletic division on Monday identified the discrepancy and is working with the NCAA to correct the scores. The NCAA did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Sports media divisions for colleges typically track statistics and transmit the data to the NCAA’s official data disseminater, Genius Sports.
“Genius Sports is a technology provider to the NCAA to facilitate the NCAA School’s official data collection of their games,” Genius Sports Communications Director Chris Dougan wrote in a statement. emailed to ESPN. “Genius Sports does not determine the official match score, but is decided by the match referee.”
Human error occasionally occurs during state storage and is usually quickly corrected. Sports bettors, who pay close attention, say that halftime score-related errors are the most common, and that tweaks to individual player stats, such as overshooting / pass the javelin or pass in football, which can sometimes take days to be updated.
Jay Croucher, business director of sportsbook PointsBet, said: “As far as actual final scores are concerned, it’s very rare.
US Integrity, a company that tracks the betting market, sent out a warning Sunday morning to its sports betting customers about possible score disparities in the State of Illinois-Chicago. However, flawed scores were still maintained on the websites of both athletic programs as of Monday afternoon and can also be found on NCAA.com and most major media outlets, including ESPN.com.
Caesars Sportsbook and PointsBet were among the first sportsbooks to announce that they will pay out any bets where the winner is on a fixed score of 81-71, while still letting the bets benefit from scoring error remains the same.
The final score in Saturday’s Chicago State University basketball game against Illinois was incorrectly listed as 80-71 Illinois State, when it should have been 81-71.
With a difference of #CaesarsSportsbook listed at 9.5, Caesar decided to pay for both outcomes.
– Caesars Sportsbook (@CaesarsSports) December 13, 2021
“In this case, we consider all bets to be winners, those with incorrect scores and those that will win with adjustment,” says Croucher. “There’s a kind of statute of limitations, we basically don’t want after two days of everyone’s money, especially in a game like that.”
Interest in betting on this match is light and comparable to Saturday’s other mainline matches, so sportsbooks don’t make a lot of money by offering winning bets. in one of the last two scores. The game is not offered by Illinois sportsbooks, which prohibit betting on events related to in-state programs. But bettors invested enough to bring the error to light on social media and eventually urge the bookmaker to pay.
Croucher says statistical errors like Saturday’s are just a cost of doing business.
“If there’s an incorrect final score in the Super Bowl a few days later, we’ll have to see about that,” added Croucher, chuckling.
