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A rare farce happened during the men's football tournament at the Paris Olympics on Wednesday, resulting in wrong payouts from bookmakers worldwide, including the Hong Kong Jockey Club (HKJC).
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During the Group B match between Argentina and Morocco, Argentina tied the game at 2-2 in the 16th minute of stoppage time but that sparked some Morocco fans to rush onto the field and throw items onto the pitch.
The game was temporarily halted, and the crowd was told to leave the stadium. The official website of the International Olympic Committee showed that the match ended at 2-2 with the players having already left for the changing rooms.
However, players were later asked to return to the pitch after the game was suspended for about two hours. The disputed goal scored by the Argentina team was disallowed by VAR for an offside offense and Morocco held on for a 2-1 victory at last.
The incident confused the media and also bookmakers around the world. The HKJC had even paid out bets based on the 2-2 draw result, but later had to reclaim the payouts due to the incident.
This led to some HKJC betting accounts showing negative balances as some customers had already spent the erroneously paidout winnings on other bets. Some netizens showed screenshots of accounts with a negative balance of more than HK$1,000.
Barrister Albert Luk Wai-hung stated that the HKJC has the right to pursue the money from the relevant accounts, as the payout was the result of a third-party error rather than a mistake by the Club.
Luk added that those who received the incorrect payouts are obligated to return the money, and failure to do so could be treated as committing the offense of Theft.
According to the "Fixed Odds Football Bets" under the Football Betting Rules made by HKJC, it stated that "Once the Operator has started paying out Dividends or Refunds based on a referee’s declaration, any subsequent amendment on such declaration as determined by the referee or decision by the official body of the relevant Match or tournament which may affect the qualification of such Dividends or Refunds will be ignored for payment of those Dividends or Refunds."
In response, HKJC said according to the standard procedures of result verification based on the official and information providers’ information after the match ended at 11.07 pm, the Club has arranged payouts based on full-time result of 2-2 at 11.52 pm.
It noted that after the payout was made, the official party has determined the goal made by Argentina players as invalid and updated the full-time result as 1-2 after 1.06 am.
"HKJC Football has based on the official full-time result of 1-2 to arrange payout at 3:19 am after verification," it added.
