Wayne Parry, Associated Press
ATLANTIC CITY, N.J. — It might have seemed too good to be true, but there it was, and on April Fool’s Day, no less: One of the country’s leading sports books was taking bets on mixed martial arts fights that had already happened a week earlier.
FanDuel accepted 34 bets on the fights that were promoted by the sports book as live events scheduled to take place on April 1, 2022.
But the fights had actually taken place a week earlier, on March 25.
New Jersey gambling regulators fined FanDuel $2,000 for the mistake, and the company paid out over $230,000 to settle the bets.
FanDuel declined comment Wednesday on the fine, which it agreed to pay.
But the state Division of Gaming Enforcement said in a letter made public on Monday that FanDuel said it was not notified by its data-feed providers that the Professional Fighters League matches were actually a recording of events that had already happened.
Instead, FanDuel’s trading team manually created betting markets based on information they obtained directly from the Professional Fighters League, New Jersey Deputy Attorney General Gina DeAnnuntis wrote.
“FanDuel confirmed that its traders failed to confirm with PFL that the event had previously occurred and was being presented via a tape delay,” she wrote.
FanDuel told the state that on April 1, 2022, it took 26 online wagers and eight retail wagers worth $190,904 on the events.
Afterwards, FanDuel received a notification from the International Betting Integrity Association, which monitors sports betting transactions, looking for suspicious activity or out-of-the-ordinary patterns, that the events it was offering odds on had already happened.
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