Me too as a manufacturing engineer who extensively used statistics.
I’m sure there’s something in the fine print about disallowing taking advantage of a glitch but this doesn’t seem like a glitch to me. A glitch is a programming error like if you push two buttons at the same time you automatically win. This is a fuck up. They’re making billions. They should have quietly paid him and fixed the error.
Businesses are allowed to make unprofitable offers, and in fact sometimes do so deliberately for various reasons. If a business does not want to make an unprofitable offer, it’s their responsibility to make sure that what they’re offering is profitable.
When big businesses notice others doing things that are profitable for the business at the expense of those others, they consider it to be a fiduciary duty to take advantage of that, and claim that they in fact had no choice. When the shoe’s on the other foot, they need to wear it.
Well, not exactly. He bet on Lukes to get 8 or more hits in the League Championship Series. He placed those bets before the series started. The series is a best-of-7, meaning that there could be 4, 5, 6, or 7 games. The series ended up going 7 games, and Lukes didn’t record his 8th hit until game 6. Lukes obviously had to get at least 8 hits for the bets to pay out, and the odds on him getting at least 8 hits were +550, which is far from a ‘nearly sure winner’.
Not quite yet, according to S&P Global.
DraftKings Inc. (NASDAQ: DKNG) is poised to deliver its first profitable year in 2025
I meant revenue but I am surprised that they’re not profitable yet. Their advertising budget is insane of course.
Actually, I am as well. Incredible revenues, but they have paid tons of money to attract new subscribers through ‘free’ bets and other promos, plus they pay a boatload of taxes to each state in which they’re licensed.
In order to place that bet 27 times, he had to add something to his parlay, which were nearly sure winners.
Well, yes, but for a parlay to pay out, ALL bets have to hit. If Lukes didn’t collect 8 hits in the series, the bettor would have lost all of his bets.
It is not an offer though, it’s a blatant mistake. Just like a shop shouldn’t sell a TV for $10.00 because somebody made a mistake in the printing, sports betters know you can’t make accumulators out of events that are wholly dependent on each other. The better in question couldn’t possibly not have known that this was a “TV for $10.00” situation.
And it’s the business’s responsibility to avoid blatant mistakes, too.
Put it this way: If someone finds a $100 bill lying on the sidewalk, is it a crime for them to pick it up? A Benjamin lying on the sidewalk is definitely a mistake; nobody would deliberately leave it there.
(IANA Lawyer, but I’m functionally married to one and we’ve been together for 19 years.)
The problem with your analogy is that in the case of the TV, the money isn’t collected yet, so the buyer doesn’t lose anything and there’s no consideration exchange. There is no legal binding for the company to honor the $10 sales price.
Draft Kings collected the man’s money upfront. That’s already an acceptance of his consideration. This means that he has a legal right to demand they honor their part of the contract. And they did, even though at the time they gave him their consideration, they didn’t know that there was a bug in their software.
From a strict exchange of consideration perspective, and absent any language allowing them to alter terms of use, they have no automatic recourse.
That being said, gambling contracts may be given special dispensation under the jurisdiction that this contract was agreed to. Also, a court may rule that this was a special exception to the understood contract, and that Draft Kings is entitled to only payout what would have been the expected payout had the bug not existed.
But that’s up to the court to decide, and they ruled against Draft Kings.
Tl;dr: The underpriced TV analogy doesn’t hold water here. The situations are not really equivalent.
Addendum to the above:
If the TV was actually advertised as $10. And you junked your old TV and went all the way to the store to buy that $10 TV only to find that the company did not honor the advertised price, you might have a case. Because you have already provided consideration by junking your TV and travelling to the store. But still, it’s a difficult case to prove. Because a reasonable person would likely conclude that the $10 price is a misprint.
But if you went to the store because you were merely shopping and happened upon a $10 TV and wanted to buy it, the vendor is under no obligation to sell it to you at that price.
In this case you saw exactly who dropped the $100. Just picking it up and pocketing it here would be very unethical, whether it’s a crime or not
If it was a person, sure, it’d be unethical. Not when it’s a corporation, that exists for the express purpose of taking maximal advantage of me.
That’s how I read it, too. DK cited the agreement specs that indicated clear errors could not legitimately be exploited. The commissioners seemed to ignore that and said tough noogies.
To be clear, I shed no tears for DK. But it seems like a shitty decision.
OK, put it this way: Suppose that the mistake had gone the other way. Suppose that a bettor had made a bet that wasn’t supposed to be allowed, and then lost. Do you think that DraftKings would have refunded the bettor the amount of the invalid bets? Or rather, that they would have done so without being forced to by a state gaming commission?
Which certainly could have happened in this case. As I mentioned above, if Lukes hadn’t gotten 8 hits in the series, the bettor would have out over $12k.
Somehow, I doubt that DK would have refunded his money.
In this case if the umbrella bet (the 8 hits) had lost then the better would have lost fair and square and nothing would be owed, as the 8 hits and the fair price for it covers all the other bets. DK did try to pay him out fair price after the error was noticed.
True. But the error was only noticed after all the bets were won. ISTM that their software should have noticed an anomaly in the bettor’s bets, as he had never bet that much money before. And then a cursory investigation would have revealed that they had screwed up. At that point they could have voided the bets and refunded his money.
From the first article: “The customer also violated DraftKings’ house rules, Harrington said, which prohibit repeat betting and betting on markets with obvious errors.”
Not sure how legally binding “house rules” are. If these are part of the terms of agreement to use DK, seems like DK’s counsel has a strong argument. That said, the fact that the commissioners voted 5-0 against DK suggests there’s more than meets the eye here.
So, the restriction on betting on markets with obvious errors is either enforceable (and the commission made a shitty decision), or it’s not (and DK was flailing). I don’t think the commission addressed this specifically, so it still seems to me they made a bad call. And I’ll repeat, I shed zero tears for DK.
Just to extend the shop metaphor, this would be like if the TV was advertised at $1000, all the labels in the shop say $1000, running it through the checkout normally gets $1000 but one guy, playing around with the checkout works out that if you angle the barcode juuust right and then twist the self service till gets confused and only charges $10, but there’s no way he was confused that the actual price was not $1000. He manages to “pay” for the TV and drive it home before the glitch is noticed.