A mysterious malfunction of the Hong Kong Jockey Club's eWin website for the duration of yesterday's Happy Valley meeting has cost the club tens of millions of dollars and left thousands of punters bitter and angry after being unable to place bets.
The eWin web page, through which many Jockey Club customers access their betting accounts online, became "intermittently unavailable" just after the start of race one at 12.45pm, according to the club's executive director, customer and marketing Richard Cheung Che-kit and remained that way for the remainder of the card.
On-course terminals were not affected at all and, while punters theorised about hackers, faulty wiring and system congestion, Cheung said the reason for the issue was unclear.
"The landing page simply would not load properly and as a result people could not place bets through it," said Cheung after the meeting. "At some times, it was briefly able to load but just as quickly went down again. The technical side of the problem is under extensive investigation by our staff but we do not understand what happened at this stage so we can offer no explanation."
The club was swamped with inquiries and angry calls from customers wanting to know what had happened and responded by advising customers to access their betting accounts by others means, like Telebet or through alternative digital means like the club's smart phone apps, which were unaffected.
Nevertheless Cheung admits the club took a hit financially as eWin is a popular wagering gateway.
"There is no sugar coating it - eWin is the platform used to place around 22 per cent of our total betting turnover, so if that platform is down then, yes, a proportion of that betting might move to other platforms, but some will be lost," Cheung said.
"Turnover for the day was down by around HK$65 million, or 4.9 per cent, on last year's comparative meeting and we have to attribute at least part of that amount to the problem with eWin. So it has been an expensive problem, but to me it isn't even just about the betting numbers.
"When something like this happens, it means that customer satisfaction with the experience of placing a wager with the club has been impaired. We highly value providing a good experience and so that hurts us more in the long run than whatever turnover was lost on the day."
Cheung said the club also received complaints from customers on course at Happy Valley itself, where some of the restaurants and private rooms are equipped with tablet computers customers use to access eWin to place bets.
"We have all our technicians working hard to find the cause of the problem and just as importantly to fix it as quickly as possible so it doesn't have an impact on our simulcast of the Melbourne Cup race meeting on Tuesday," Cheung said.
Remarkably, the problem seemed to disappear as soon as the final race had been run, with some punters getting in touch with South China Morning Post racing staff to report that the eWin page and everything associated with it could once again be accessed as normal by 6pm.
