NJ Hands Down More Fines to Sports Betting Companies
ATLANTIC CITY, N.J. (AP) — New Jersey gambling regulators have handed out $40,000 in fines to two sportsbooks and a tech company for violations that included taking bets on unauthorized events, and on games that had already ended.
In information made public Monday, the New Jersey Division of Gaming Enforcement fined DraftKings $20,000. It also levied $10,000 fines on Rush Street Interactive NJ and the sports betting technology company Kambi.
According to documents released by the state, Rush Street accepted 16 bets worth $1,523 in Nov. 2021 on a college basketball game between the University of North Carolina-Asheville and Tennessee Tech University after the game had already concluded with a UNC victory.
Kambi told the enforcement division that a trader had failed to manually remove that game from its betting markets, saying it had stopped receiving messages from its own sports data provider due to a network connectivity error. Kambi said it has updated its guidelines and retrained its traders to prevent a recurrence.
In March 2022 Rush Street took seven bets totaling just under $2,900 on three Magic City Jai Alai games after the results were already known.
Kambi told the division it experienced a connectivity issue that allowed the bets to be accepted after the games were over. An explanation of what Kambi did to address the situation was blacked out in documents released by the division.
A month earlier Rush Street took 13 wagers worth $8,150 with pre-match odds on a Professional Golf Association match after the event had already begun. In this case, Kambi told the division a newly hired trader failed to enter the correct closing time time for bets on the event. The trader and a supervisor underwent retraining.
DraftKings was fined for taking bets on unapproved events including Russian basketball for nine months in 2020 and 2021. It eventually voided over $61,000 in bets and returned the money to customers after being directed to do so by the state.
In this case, Kambi told the division it misidentified this particular Russian basketball league as one that was approved for wagering in New Jersey. DraftKings told the state it did not catch the error, either.
In 2020, DraftKings accepted 484 wagers on unapproved table tennis matches. Kambi incorrectly enabled the events for wagering without conditions required by the state, the division said.
