Bettors in Massachusetts who have been limited by sportsbooks started getting letters June 1 telling them why, in accordance with new state regulations.
And based on early returns, the “why” reads like something George Orwell, working with a PR team, would’ve concocted.
One bettor on social media site X — whose handle is @TheArbFather, so, he’s not hiding his love of opportunities for arbitrage plays — received his letter from DraftKings, but it wasn’t exactly what one might call informative.
It started by saying he was limited, and then — grammar/typos be damned — proceeded to tell him “why.”
And the why was “… for internal risk management purposes based on observing activity indicative of indicative of targeting perceived market inefficiency in a manner which may impact DraftKings’ ability to provide the desired experience to its customers. These limits apply to all sports wagering markets.”
Well that explains it.
Some of the letters, however, were much more specific.
One bettor received a note from Fanatics saying their account would be limited due to “potential arbitrage positions.”
X user @DataBasedBets posted their letter from DraftKings, and in this case they were limited for — again with the double “indicative of” — “activity indicative of indicative of attempting to exploit potential latency associated with live market updates.”
A further perusal of X did not yield any more letters as of 2 p.m. ET, but it’s expected FanDuel and other Massachusetts books will see their letters posted as the day goes on.
But as of now — and for those keeping score at home — those DraftKings letters, with the same garbled “indicative of indicative of” construction, tells you these are coming out of a template. Nobody wrote @TheArbFather a personal note. This is looking like a copy-paste job, yielding the same grammatical hiccup.
Which is probably not going to sit well with the Massachusetts Gaming Commission.
Details, please
When the commission signed off on the rule demanding sportsbooks tell bettors why they’d been cut off at the knees, specificity was the entire ballgame. Justin Stempeck, the chief deputy general counsel, was blunt about it, saying a two-word brushoff wouldn’t be acceptable, and “due to a business decision” (which was floated by an operator) wasn’t going to cut it. Commissioner Paul Brodeur went a step further and called that sort of non-answer “kind of offensive.”
The stated goal, in Brodeur’s words, was for the customer to understand what’s going on with their account. So does “activity indicative of indicative of targeting perceived market inefficiency in a manner which may impact DraftKings’ ability to provide the desired experience to its customers” clear that bar?
To be fair, it is more than two words. It is also, technically, English. Whether it told @TheArbFather a single thing he didn’t already know — that DraftKings will no longer accept his bets — is the question the commission will be wrestling with next.
Fanatics, for what it’s worth, got closer to the spirit, noting “arbitrage” was the reason the bettor was limited.
And the commission had indicated it would be reading along with the bettors. Carrie Torrisi, the sports wagering division chief, confirmed her team would review the actual communications going to limited bettors. The commission also left the door open to a public review of whether operators are offering genuine explanations or just dressing up “business decisions” with word sludge.
Chair Jordan Maynard, for his part, didn’t sound worried about the timeline back in February.
“We’ll know pretty quickly who’s making good faith efforts and what, if any, tweaks we need to make to this to accomplish that transparency goal,” Maynard said when they passed the regulation.
Day one suggests tweaks are coming.
