Irate sports bettor suing BCLC’s Playnow.com over voided Blue Jays bets

The Toronto Blue Jays’ late season winning streak left plenty of Canadian baseball fans smiling, but at least one sports bettor is sporting a frown after the British Columbia Lottery Corporation’s online sports betting site clipped his wings.

BC resident Gregory Butchart recently filed suit in small claims court, accusing BCLC of inappropriately voiding baseball wagers he’d placed on the PlayNow.com gambling site in early August. Canadian law restricts provincial lottery corporations to parlay wagers and Butchart put $275 down on the Jays to win the American League East and the New York Yankees to claim a wild card spot.

Eight days after making his wagers, Butchart received an email from BCLC, saying they’d voided his bets due to their policy of not accepting ‘correlated’ wagers, in which the result of one bet fully or partly impacts the outcome of another bet.

Butchart told CBC News that he disputed BCLC’s view of the situation, calling the two bets “slightly correlated,” as a Blue Jays’ division win meant there were “still 16 other teams that could win the wild card.”