Barstool Sportsbook customers who placed bets on the Sunday, September 24 National Football League (NFL) game between the New York Giants and Arizona Cardinals are furious that their accounts were frozen and their bets voided due to technical glitches, according to Legal Sports Reports.
A Penn Sports Interactive filing with the Massachusetts Gaming Commission (MGC) indicated the problems caused pregame NFL betting lines on 14 types of wagers in 10 markets to remain open during the game, even after they had cashed. That led some bettors to wager on Saquon Barkley to score at least one touchdown long after his third-quarter score, for example.
Barstool Sportsbook operates in 14 states; only two provided information about the voided Barstool wagers to LSR. In Massachusetts, 257 wagers totaling $47,760 across 59 accounts were affected and in Maryland, 468 bets across 113 accounts were affected.
Despite widespread outrage on social media sites, regulators said Penn Sports Interactive is well within its right to cancel bets due to system error. Massachusetts regulators voted unanimously to allow Penn to void the bets, providing the company puts in place emergency resolutions to prevent a recurrence. MGC Commissioner Nakisha Skinner said, “It’s at their discretion whether they want to offer these kinds of bets, but If we have another request of this kind before us, I don’t know that I’ll be sympathetic.”
LSR reported regulators in Colorado, Indiana, Ohio and Pennsylvania said rules allow sportsbooks to void bets when obvious errors occur. In Arizona, Illinois, Maryland and Tennessee, regulators said they are aware of the situation and a spokesman in New Jersey said officials are reviewing Penn’s request to void Barstool wagers.
In its MGC report, Penn said its odds provider, Swish Analytics, had a technical malfunction in data, which was exacerbated by unexpected betting surges on its Las Vegas trading platform. The combination of events caused many bets to be graded as wins, which allowed bettors who aced fast to withdraw funds and keep their cash.
According to documents reviewed by LSR, a bettor who belongs to a private text chat dedicated to exposing sportsbooks pricing anomalies claimed $32,000 in wagers were voided on his Barstool account. He said he feared a void when he saw information that was being shared in larger Discord groups. The bettor spoke with a Barstool customer rep who told him ”all wagers and bets are perfectly fine!”
Penn recently announced it will be ditching the Barstool brand to ESPN Bet in November, a move that could alleviate some of the pressure over the September 24 fiasco. Penn Chief Executive Officer Jay Snowden previously said the new app will incorporate product enhancements from theScore.
