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The clause exists for a real reason. Software does fail, and a game that pays out wrongly because of a defect creates a liability nobody contracted for. What the clause cannot do is be a blank cheque, and the case that made that concrete is Green v Petfre (Gibraltar) Ltd (t/a Betfred) [2021] EWHC 842 (QB).
What happened
In 2018 Andrew Green played an online game called Frankie Dettori's Magic Seven Blackjack. His screen showed chips valued at £1,722,500. When he tried to cash them in it did not work, and Betfred told him there had been a glitch in the game and it would not pay.
Betfred relied on three things: clause 4.4 of its terms and conditions, clause 5 of the end-user licence agreement, and the rules of the game, each excluding liability for payment in the event of a malfunction.
Mrs Justice Foster gave summary judgment to Mr Green, finding Betfred had no realistic prospect of successfully defending the claim. The exclusions were held ineffective — not because an operator may never exclude liability for a defect, but because these particular clauses failed on transparency and signposting: they were buried in convoluted documents the consumer had not been fairly brought to.
What the judgment actually established
- Exclusion clauses in consumer contracts are permitted — provided they are clearly drafted, transparent, fair and adequately signposted.
- Burial is a defect in the clause. A term that a consumer could in theory have found by reading everything is not automatically incorporated into the bargain.
- The malfunction question was never reached on its merits. The case did not decide whether the glitch happened or what a genuine malfunction entitles an operator to do. It decided the operator could not get to that argument through those documents.
That distinction is the part most write-ups drop, and it matters: a properly drafted, properly presented malfunction clause is still enforceable, and a real software defect is still a real defence.
What this means when a win is withheld
Practical, in order:
- Get the evidence before the account changes. Screenshots with the round identifier, the timestamp, the game name and the balance. Request the account's transaction and game history in writing, ideally the same day.
- Make the operator state its reason in writing. "Malfunction" is a legal position with consequences. Ask which clause is relied on and what the defect was. A refusal to name either is itself informative.
- Read the clause it names — and where you saw it. After Green, how prominently a term was presented is part of the question, not a technicality.
- Escalate to the named ADR provider. Licensed operators identify a dispute resolution body. That name, not the support address, is the escalation route.
- Check the payout ceiling separately. A win can be accepted and still be paid in slices under a monthly cap — see what a max-win multiplier means.
The wider lesson about terms
Green is not really a gambling case. It is a consumer-contracts case that happens to involve a jackpot, and its logic applies to every clause an operator hopes never to have to explain: dormancy fees, bonus forfeiture, account closure with balance retention. The test is not whether the clause exists, it is whether the consumer was fairly shown it.
Which gives a genuinely useful habit for anyone opening an account: read the withdrawal section, the bonus forfeiture section and the malfunction clause before depositing, and note whether they were reachable in one step from the sign-up page or buried three documents deep. The second case is not just a warning about that operator's fairness. It is, after Green, a weakness in the operator's own position.
Verification demands are a separate subject and equally misunderstood — see source of funds against source of wealth. The section index is Money & Accounts.
Sources
- Stephenson Harwood — case analysis of Green v Petfre (Gibraltar) Ltd [2021] EWHC 842 (QB)
- RPC — exclusion clause denied due to convoluted terms and conditions
- CMS Law-Now — what the summary judgment means for operators; requirement for clear, transparent, signposted exclusions
- Green v Petfre (Gibraltar) Ltd (t/a Betfred) — judgment text
Nothing here is legal advice. Read against the sources above on 27 September 2026; the judgment itself takes precedence over any summary of it, including this one.