Old fights billed as live

The New Jersey Division of Gaming Enforcement (DGE) has fined FanDuel for accepting bets on prerecorded mixed martial arts fights billed as live events.

fined the Flutter-owned brand $2,000

In a letter made public this week, the DGE announced it had fined the Flutter-owned brand $2,000 for taking bets on predetermined Professional Fighters League (PFL) bouts, a mistake that happened on April Fool’s Day.

Reports on the FanDuel fine started appearing in the US media Wednesday, which revealed FanDuel had “manually created the betting markets” for the fights in question based on information it had received from the PFL.

According to New Jersey Deputy Attorney General Gina DeAnnuntis, however, there was a breakdown in communication. “FanDuel confirmed that its traders failed to confirm with PFL that the event had previously occurred and was being presented via a tape delay,” DeAnnuntis stated.

PFL under fire again

On Wednesday, ESPN reported that while the DGE only fined FanDuel $2,000, the New York City-based brand has shelled out over $230,000 to settle the contentious April Fool’s Day bets.

In the DGE’s letter on Monday, the state regulatory body confirmed that on “about April 24, 2024” FanDuel accepted its PFA violations and agreed to the fine. FanDuel admitted to taking 26 bets online and eight via its bricks-and-mortar outlets worth a total of $190,904.

It came down to a notification from sports betting transaction monitor, the International Betting Integrity Association, that alerted FanDuel it had offered markets on events that had already occurred a week earlier.

According to media reports on Wednesday, FanDuel declined commenting on the DGE penalty.

This isn’t, however, the first time the PFL has gotten into hot water over pre-recorded events billed as live. In April 2022, betting market watchdog US Integrity confirmed a PFL Challenger Series event billed as live had already taken place.

US Integrity flagged up suspicious betting activity around the fights that caused headaches for multiple sportsbooks, including DraftKings, which independently nixed the markets when it noticed shady betting trends on the PFA event.  

The controversy drew the fire of many state gaming regulators including Arizona, Colorado, Nevada, and New Hampshire in the PFL’s direction.  

Regulator on a roll

FanDuel wasn’t the only US sports betting market leader to fall foul of the DGE in July. On Friday, news emerged that the state body had hit DraftKings with a $100,000 fine for misreporting sports betting data.

Unlike its public censure of FanDuel for the April 1 PFL controversy, which came with a requirement the sportsbook update its internal controls to futureproof against a repeat episode, the DGE hauled DraftKings through the ashes.

 gross errors and failures”

In a public telling off, the DGE’s Acting Director Mary Jo Flaherty wrote DraftKings that its miscalculation of amounts bettors wagered on parlays and other bet-type categories were “types of gross errors and failures” that the DGE cannot tolerate.