The New Jersey Division of Gaming Enforcement (DGE) is looking into a sports betting tournament (DraftKings Sports Betting National Championship), held over the weekend in which some gamblers were unable to place bets on an NFL playoff game, costing them a chance to win a $1 million jackpot prize.
The NJ DGE said on Monday it is reviewing the DraftKings tournament. The first high profile tournament of its kind since sports betting was legalized in New Jersey.
Some bettors were restricted on Sunday to betting on the two NFL playoff games. The Patriots-Chargers game ended shortly before the start of the Saints-Eagles game. This led to some bettors not having their winnings from the Patriots-Chargers game processed in time to wager on the Saints-Eagles game.
DraftKings Apology
DraftKings has apologized for the situation as they had to follow their own rules.
James Chisholm, DraftKings spokesman, said. “We recognize that in the rules the scheduled end of betting coincided very closely to the finish of the of Patriots-Chargers game.”
“While we must follow our tournament rules, we sincerely apologize for the experience. Several customer’s bets were not graded in time to allow wagering on the Saints-Eagles game. We’ve learned from this experience and seek to better our systems and rules for future events.”
However, that did little for entry Opti5624 (Rufus Peabody), a professional gambler from Washington D.C. who was leading the tournament heading into the Saints-Eagles game with a bankroll of over $81,000.
He had planned to roll that money over into a bet on the Saints at a reduced point spread. They were favored by 8 points. But lesser lines were available at a higher price. Or on the under, wagering that the total points scored between both teams combined would be beneath a certain number.
Both of those bets would have been winners. However, depending on what other competitors had done, Peabody stood a good chance of winning the $1 million grand-prize. But his winnings from the Patriots-Chargers game were not credited to his account in time for him to get his final bets down.
“I feel like it’s an issue of fairness, that some people’s bets were graded before others,” he later said. “There’s a subset of people that had their bets graded and were able to bet on the second game and a subset of others that were not.”
DraftKings & Peabody’s View
DraftKings did not say how many entrants were unable to bet on the second game.
Peabody did not say if he planned to challenge the outcome, saying he was only looking at his options.”
He finished with the tournaments third prize worth $250,000. He also got to keep his $81,000 tournament bankroll.
However, the company acknowledged that some competitors had their bets on the early game processed in time before the second game started. But, due to the short window of time between games, others were not. Several players said the gap was as short as three minutes.
“As with all mobile sports books, there is always some time period required for the back-end systems to grade the market and the payout to occur,” Chisholm said.
DraftKings was not the only bookie to experience problems on Sunday. FanDuel’s app and site were offline for about a quarter of an hour during the Saints-Eagles game. Something which enraged its customers who were looking to make live in-game bets.
