In early April NJ Online Gambling said New Jersey fined DraftKings $10,000 for sending marketing material to self-excluded gamblers.
DraftKings blamed the snafu to missing a step in the process. The sportsbook, under the banner of Resorts Casino Hotel, is not permitted to market to folks on the state’s self-exclusion list. In New Jersey, a gambler can self-exclude for a year or a lifetime and anything in between.
A third party company provided 50,000 names for DraftKings to send marketing materials to. But DraftKings had the job of checking the names against the self-exclusion list. The online sportsbook failed.
As a result, literature could have gone out to 11 people on the self-exclusion list. A gambler on the lifetime list told the state DraftKings sent him literature last November. The judgment also required a detailed account on its methodology used to prevent this from happening again.
In March, DraftKings received a $3,000 fine in Indiana for a similar violation. In February, New Jersey again hit DraftKings for $500. The state levied a penalty of $2,000 for letting restricted gamblers bet in 2019, and Iowa issued a judgment of $5,000 for a late download of the self-exclusion list.
For gamblers, the direct marketing material may trigger a relapse.
Measures to keep problem gamblers at bay may improve as the industry matures. DraftKings insists they take the issue seriously.
“People who are problem gamblers are not good long-term customers. … It can create a stain on the whole industry, and it’s not in our business interest,” DraftKings CEO and co-founder Jason Robins told the Financial Times in a recent article. Robins said the firm is working to improve safeguards.
