I Investigated the Online Sports Betting Industry. DraftKings Shut Down My Account.
In September, I’d published an investigation into how online sports betting companies like DraftKings court customers — and whether the internal guardrails they’ve put in place to stop their users from spiraling out of control are firm enough.
Key points
- Watch: Inside Our $22K Sports Betting Experiment Lisa Seville and Nadia Sussman/ProPublica The video offered viewers who may not be familiar with ProPublica (or perhaps not inclined to read 4,000-word stories) a way to learn about the reporting in the venue where so much sports betting content lives.
- In an interview for the piece, the company’s chief responsible gaming officer, Lori Kalani, had told me that the system “worked the way it was supposed to” in my case by feeding me some 30 responsible gaming messages over the course of my 10-week betting spree.
- If you’ve bet on sports with FanDuel or DraftKings, you can help ProPublica understand how these apps work.
Share Your Experience The company, like the rest of the industry, says it doesn’t want to profit off of addiction, and has invested heavily in a system of tools and in-app prompts designed to help bettors put conditions on their gambling and slow them down.
Additional details
- “We understand that this is not the decision that you were hoping for but this decision is final.” I hadn’t bet on sports in months and had withdrawn all but a few cents of my balance.
- “Upon review your account has been closed at DraftKings’ discretion,” the message read.
- Most of our viewers were young men — the prime sports betting demographic.
- What Does Your Data Reveal About Sports Betting Apps?
- For that piece, I’d intentionally bet like a problem gambler, recklessly escalating my betting behavior over 10 weeks.
How this summary was made: extractive summary — built from the sources' own reporting. It is drawn only from the reporting of the sources listed below — read the originals for full detail. How we summarize →
Advertisement
Every article behind this summary — 1 article from 1 outlet
Get stories like this in your inbox.
Subscribe — it's freeOne free email at 6am — your topics, deduplicated, five minutes. No account, no paywall.