I can understand Betonline's position. If you use the phrase "Big East Champion" with no other context, it would mean the winner of the Big East tournament. Per Wapedia, "The
Big East Men's Basketball Tournament determines the
Big East Conference champion and the winner of the conference's automatic bid to the
NCAA Tournament." Wikipedia says the same thing here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Eas...all_Tournament
Absent anything else, I could understand Betonline's position. There are other factors though which make this prop very ambiguous, and I can understand the player's position as well.
The Big East site lists 2 champions for basketball - regular season and post-season at this link:
http://www.bigeast.org/ViewArticle.d...ATCLID=1583916
Clearly, the Big East sees them both as a "championship". But which did Betonline intend? Or did Betonline even know there were two different ways to grade this wager?
Regardless of what Betonline thought, what matters is "what would a reasonable person" think? In this thread, I'd have to call Chris@TheGreek the voice of reason. Greek doesn't often have problems like this though, because their rules are very clear - they frequently use explanations in the prop wording and in teh rules.
Two factors make it look like the player was betting on the regular season. First, the accepted odds were "at market" - similar to Greek's - for the regular season championship. Second, the original date of the event was March 1, not March 15th. These two factors would make most people (including the player here) think they were betting on the regular season championship.
I can fully understand Betonline here. In changing the date, they were probably trying to clarify that it intended this wager to be on the tournament. I think it's likely that Betonline wasn't quite sure itself until recently, and then it made its best guess of what this wager meant.
The future as worded can certainly be ambiguous. However, it is the sportsbook's job to make sure any wager it accepts has only one way to be graded. Beonline failed to do that in this instance.
I hope Betonline takes another longer look at this one.
While it's not as black and white as some people say, I think the player has a legitimate gripe.