The New Jersey Division of Gaming Enforcement (DGE) has fined three companies a total of $40,000 for violations that include accepting wagers on unauthorized and past events.
In documents posted on its website, the DGE said it has fined DraftKings $20,000 and Rush Street Interactive (RSI) $10,000. It also levied a $10,000 sanction on Kambi, which was the sports betting technology partner of the two operators at the time of the infractions. DraftKings and Kambi worked together until 2021, while RSI and the Swedish provider renewed their sportsbook agreement in August 2024.
DraftKings accepted bets on unapproved events
According to public documents, DraftKings’ fined was for taking bets on events that were not approved for wagering by the DGE.
After Kambi mistakenly identified the Russian Super League as the DGE-approved first-tier basketball league in Russia, DraftKings allowed bets on the unapproved league for nine months from April 2020 to January 2021, taking more than $61,000 in bets. The wagers were eventually voided and refunded after being identified by the DGE.
DraftKings and Kambi also accepted 484 bets in 2020 on unapproved table tennis matches. Then, in 2022, DraftKings, without Kambi’s involvement, took 182 NFL pre-season bets worth nearly $7,000 involving individual players but did not divulge to the state what specific information was included in the wagers.
RSI took money on games that had already ended
Meanwhile, RSI’s fine was for taking bets between 2021 and 2022 on games that had ended or already started.
In November 2021, it accepted 16 bets worth more than $1,500 on a college basketball game that had already been won by the University of North Carolina-Asheville. Kambi reported to the DGE that a trader had failed to manually remove the game from betting eligibility due to a technology-related communication breakdown with its sports data provider due to a network connectivity error.
In February 2022, RSI allowed 13 wagers worth more than $8,000 set at pre-match odds on a PGA golf game despite the fact the event had already started. Kambi said a newly hired trader did not enter the correct closing time for bets. A month later, RSI took just under $2,900 in bets on three Magic City Jai Alai games after the results were already known, due to a connectivity issue.
SBC Americas reached out to DraftKings, RSI and Kambi for comment but had not heard back at the time of writing.
Sportsbooks continue to fall afoul of NJ
This is not the first time in 2024 that DraftKings has been fined by New Jersey. In July, it paid a $100,000 penalty for reporting inaccurate sports betting data, which the regulator said amounted to “gross errors and failures.”
Sportsbooks accepting wagers on past events has also been a recurring theme in New Jersey in recent months.
The DGE fined bet365 $33,000 in September as punishment for numerous instances between February 2022 and January 2023 of mistakenly taking bettors’ money on events that had already happened. And just two weeks ago, it fined another British operator, William Hill, $20,000 for accepting wagers on numerous finished contests.
