William Hill’s Betting Site Still Down in Nevada after Super Bowl Issue

According to the most recent updates, William Hill Nevada is still trying to get its betting site and mobile betting app back on track following an outage during the second half of the Super Bowl. Following an unfortunate development, the bookmaker’s betting platform went down in what is recognised as the largest sporting event in the US, and the busiest period of the year for betting sites.

On Sunday, 12^th February 2023, William Hill customers noticed that the betting system, both in physical betting locations and online, was not accessible and no further bets could be made. William Hill released an update, acknowledging the outage, and stating:

“We are aware of an issue affecting users in NV. Our team is looking into this, and we hope to have a resolution as soon as possible. We will provide any updates here as they become available.”

The company must have hoped for a quick resolution in order to salvage some of the losses, with customers potentially taking their business elsewhere, however 4 days later, the situation is still not fully resolved. While betting in physical locations has now resumed, the bookmaker’s online betting site and mobile betting app are still not up and running. Meanwhile, William Hill has issued several updates, stating that its team is “aggressively working” in order to have the problem fixed.

This situation has developed at a crucial time for William Hill’s US operations. The bookmaker, together with its US partner Caesars, is currently rolling out its bespoke, state-of-the-art proprietary platform. This is already active in some states and has replaced William Hill’s legacy betting sites. It appears, however, that William Hill is looking to test the system and ensure it is fully functional before implementing it in a key betting market such as Nevada. Nevada was the first US state to legalise online sports betting, and William Hill and Caesars have a long history of working there. A spokesperson for William Hill said:

“[…] For the past year, we have been working on bringing our new, state-of-the-art sports betting platform to the market. With Nevada being our longest-tenured state, it is important that our new platform is battle-tested. As we roll that system out across the country, it performed very well during the Super Bowl. We look forward to bringing it to Nevada as soon as possible.”

Industry experts are surprised with the situation. William Hill is one of the largest bookmakers in the world and operates betting sites in many countries without any issues. It is one of the most popular UK betting sites and the brand William Hill is usually associated with reliability, seamless operation, and brilliant customer service. While the problem has not yet been fully identified, it is clear that it is an unexpected glitch which has happened at a very bad time for the operator and its customers.

According to geolocation analyst GeoComply, over 100 million bets were placed using betting sites over the Super Bowl weekend across the US, and it is inevitable that William Hill would have lost a fair few wagers as a result of the outage. As soon as the technical issue was encountered, several attempts were made to bring the system back in order to process all bets, however these were unsuccessful. It appears that the outage was the result of a complex data issue that is difficult to resolve. William Hill has since said that its technical experts are “diligently” working to implement a solution. The following explanation was provided by the bookmaker in relation to the fault:

“Towards the end of the second quarter of Super Bowl LVII, our William Hill Nevada sports betting platform experienced an unforeseen technical issue that took our Caesars Sportsbook by Willliam Hill and William Hill Nevada apps and our retail sportsbook offline. The team has been aggressively working to bring the platform back to full functionality as quickly as possible. We have pinpointed the cause of the system failure and we are now working through the resolution with all of our available resources. We sincerely apologize for the frustration and inconvenience it’s caused our valued customers.”

It is certain that William Hill is doing everything it can to resolve the situation. While it will not be able to get back lost bets, any such outage could be detrimental to the brand and its future operations. William Hill must also be acutely aware that one of its rival UK betting sites, Betfred, has now entered the Nevada betting market, and offers physical betting services. With so many betting sites to choose from, customers who are eager to place a bet could just pick another one, take advantage of a good introductory offer, and work with another bookmaker. We will follow the situation and report any relevant updates here.