"Your bet is voided" is a phrase any bettors do not want to see just because of the term itself. However, is a voided bet worst than a losing one? What happens to your parlays if one of its legs is voided?
We answer these questions, especially the second one, on what happens when wagers are voided below.
What Happens to Voided Sports Bets?
Voided sports bets are canceled bets, neither winning nor losing wagers. If an announcement says a game with your wager is canceled for various reasons, do not panic. If you have a canceled money line for an NFL game, you will get your stake back as a refund. This is a losing scenario for sports bookies since they lose their chance of making money from various wagers, including high-risk ones.
On the other hand, voided bets made with bonuses or promotions are a different situation. Most bookmakers will not refund free bets if a wager is voided since these are just promotional credits. If this happens, you can still try to get back your free bet by contacting customer support. You have a good chance of regaining that bonus or getting a different kind of compensation for your voided wager.
Voided Parlay Legs
Finally, what does a void mean in parlay? First, your whole parlay will not lose in case of a void. Bettors have a good reason to worry about canceled matches with one or more of their parlay legs. If any of these legs loses, their entire parlay is nulled and no longer active. Parlays are the primary money maker among UK and US sports betting sites because of the high risks of winning these wagers.
What if a leg is voided parlay, then? There is still a significant effect on your entire wager, where any legs affected by a canceled game or match are removed from your parlay.
Let us illustrate this with an MLB voided parlay leg of a -160 money line for the Cubs against the Rays. A sample parlay with a stake of $100 looks like this:
| Teams | Odds |
|---|---|
| Cardinals | +240 |
| Red Sox | -150 |
| Yankees | -140 |
| Cubs | -160 |
| Rangers | +200 |
| Total Payout | $4735.71 |
In a scenario where the Cubs game is canceled, the sample parlay bet will go through restructuring with the remaining legs. This restructuring will reduce the parlay payout. The result will look like this:
| Teams | Odds |
|---|---|
| Cardinals | +240 |
| Red Sox | -150 |
| Yankees | -140 |
| Rangers | +200 |
| Total Payout | $2914.29 |
Voided parlay leg reduces your sports betting ROI, which is much better than having the whole wager lost or canceled.
What happens if a Fan Duel parlay is voided when all your legs come from the same match? There are scenarios when a canceled match nullifies an entire parlay, which is the case for same-game parlays. This type of parlay consists of legs within a single game. If a match is canceled and you have a parlay made entirely of bets from a single game, the whole wager is voided.
Another scenario is 2-team parlays that consist of only two legs. If one of those legs is voided, the entire parlay turns into a single straight bet.
Scenarios That Voids Parlays
A game can be canceled due to several reasons. Here are scenarios that can lead to a voided parlay leg.
Postponed or Cancelled matches
Due to extreme circumstances, matches are likely postponed and moved to a later date or are canceled entirely. These scenarios include heavy rains or snow. Major crises in the area, such as fires and earthquakes, are good reasons to cancel a match.
It is important to note all bets in a postponed match still count if it continues within 12 to 24 hours. However, all wagers are voided if the game is held a day or two after it is postponed.
Player Injury
Player prop bets can be void if that wager's subject cannot play. This situation usually covers parlay legs with player props for one specific game. There are futures for player outcomes that cover an entire season, such as the total home run Barry Bonds can make in one season. As long as Bonds can play for the whole season, the wager still counts, even if he misses a single game due to an injury.
When a parlay leg is voided, the entire wager is recalculated instead of canceled. The entire bet is canceled in the case of a parlay made of wagers from the same game.
This article was published on August 15, 2022, and last updated on October 25, 2022.