A pricey sportsbook screwup left DraftKings on the hook for practically $1 million after Massachusetts regulators ordered the payouts tied to a botched MLB parlay scheme.
The Massachusetts Gaming Commission voted 5-0 on Thursday to reject DraftKings’ bid to void $934,137 in payouts stemming from a collection of correlated parlays positioned during MLB’s 2025 American League Championship Series, according to Bookies.com.
A Massachusetts buyer wagered $12,950 whole across 27 multi-leg parlays on Toronto Blue Jays participant Nathan Lukes, exploiting an inner DraftKings configuration error that allowed the bettor to stack a number of variations of the same wager into one wager.
DraftKings sought to void a payout of practically $1 million to a bettor who positioned 27 multi-leg parlay wagers that were profitable. Tada Images – stock.adobe.com
DraftKings advised regulators the bets should never have been accepted and argued the patron acted unethically by taking benefit of an apparent error.
Commissioners flatly rejected that argument.
The wagers were tied to DraftKings’ “Player to Record X+ Hits in Series” market during the seven-game ALCS between Toronto and Seattle.
Because of a misclassification inside DraftKings’ trading instruments, Lukes was incorrectly labeled a “non-participant” rather than an lively participant.
That designation disabled safeguards designed to block bettors from parlaying correlated outcomes from the same market.
As a end result, the bettor was ready to mix a number of Lukes hit thresholds — including 5+, 6+, 7+ and 8+ hits — into single parlays, functionally creating an inflated wager on Lukes recording eight or more hits at dramatically enhanced odds.
A Massachusetts buyer wagered $12,950 whole across 27 multi-leg parlays on Toronto Blue Jays participant Nathan Lukes. AP
The bettor also added unrelated, high-probability legs, including NFL moneyline bets, to further juice payouts.
Lukes finally appeared in all seven video games and completed the collection with 9 hits, clearing every threshold.
Of the 27 parlays positioned, 24 hit cleanly. Only three lost due to unrelated school soccer legs involving Clemson, Florida State and Miami.
During a heated exchange at Thursday’s commission assembly, DraftKings government Paul Harrington accused the patron of fraud and unethical conduct.
DraftKings advised regulators the bets should never have been accepted and argued the patron acted unethically by taking benefit of an apparent error.
Commissioners bristled. One of them, Eileen O’Brien, blasted DraftKings for casting aspersions on the bettor without evidence and said the scenario did not meet the commonplace of an “obvious error.”
“An obvious error is a legal and factual impossibility,” O’Brien said. “This is an advantage that the patron took.”
She added that DraftKings’ inner failures — not the bettor’s conduct — created the scenario.
“We need to seriously consider giving voice to the consumer and getting their half the story,” O’Brien said. “The compulsion to pay will in fact encourage compliance.”
Because of a misclassification inside DraftKings’ trading instruments, Lukes was incorrectly labeled a “non-participant” rather than an lively participant. Getty Images
Other commissioners echoed that view, emphasizing that it is the operator’s accountability to guarantee the integrity of its markets.
The commission famous that DraftKings acknowledged the root cause was inner — a configuration failure within its own trading instruments — and not the end result of a third-party odds supplier or exterior knowledge feed.
Upon discovering the error, DraftKings pulled the affected markets, left the wagers unsettled pending regulatory steering and carried out corrective fixes.
The company said no other Massachusetts prospects were impacted, though the same difficulty appeared in two other jurisdictions.
The Post has sought remark from DraftKings.