Elizabeth Merrill
Close
Elizabeth Merrill
ESPN Senior Writer
- Elizabeth Merrill is a senior writer for ESPN. She previously wrote for The Kansas City Star and The Omaha World-Herald.
David Purdum
Close
David Purdum
ESPN Staff Writer
- Joined ESPN in 2014
- Journalist covering gambling industry since 2008
Multiple Authors
Hours after a Los Angeles jury found Meta and YouTube harmed a young user by utilizing addictive features, attorneys involved in the case filed suit against DraftKings and FanDuel and accused the sportsbooks of using similar technology and methods as social media companies to keep customers betting and causing some of them to develop gambling addictions.
In a personal injury complaint filed Wednesday in Massachusetts state court, attorneys allege that the sportsbooks track users’ behavior and use that data to target them to keep betting “precisely when they’re most susceptible, like late at night or after a big loss.”
“Defendants have full visibility into users’ concerning betting patterns and then push the users to gamble further through targeted advertising, personalized ‘bonus’ incentives, and ‘push’ notifications,” the suit alleges.
FanDuel declined to comment. DraftKings did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The lawsuit is the second filed this week in conjunction with the Public Health Advocacy Institute (PHAI), a legal research center at Northeastern University. On Tuesday, clients represented by PHAI sued FanDuel, DraftKings, the NFL and data company Genius Sports in Pennsylvania state court, alleging they offer a “known addictive product.”
The cases are part of an uptick in gambling litigation in recent years. Similar suits have been dismissed in the past, however, with judges ruling that sportsbooks and casinos are not legally responsible for monitoring their customers’ betting habits.
The latest lawsuit takes aim at the sportsbooks’ algorithms.
Jennifer Hoekstra, a partner at Aylstock, Witkin, Kreis & Overholtz, PLC, the firm representing the plaintiff, said sportsbooks have taken the same approach as social media and video game companies. Hoekstra, who told ESPN she worked on discovery and briefing for the California social media case, said sportsbooks can put safeguards in place to protect gamblers from losing control, but the “apps are designed to make it more addictive.”
“They develop and personalize themselves to the individual user,” Hoekstra told ESPN. “When you log-in, the algorithm knows who you are and what you’re interested in. It pops up, so it becomes more addictive for that person.”
The plaintiff downloaded the DraftKings and FanDuel apps around 2023 — after they became legal in Massachusetts — and, according to the lawsuit, placed small, recreational bets while watching games. Eventually, his gambling escalated to “an unmanageable addiction to the defendants’ sports betting platforms,” the lawsuit alleges.
DraftKings and FanDuel provided him with VIP managers, who offered incentives such as bonuses and tickets to sporting events that the lawsuit claims were an effort to ensure he bet more often.
That first year, on FanDuel, he wagered nearly $200,000, which was about twice his pre-tax income.
In 2024, the complaint said, his play on FanDuel increased to $1.3 million, “reflecting disordered use of the platform.” The next year his wagers topped $1.5 million and he left his job. He is now in therapy for gambling addiction, according to the lawsuit.
Gambling addiction suits have been dismissed repeatedly in multiple states. A federal judge in Pennsylvania on Monday dismissed a class-action suit against DraftKings that alleged the sportsbook’s VIP hosts and marketing led to gambling addiction. The judge ruled that “encouraging persons to gamble, even if the persons are compulsive gamblers, does not meet the high bar of extreme and outrageous conduct.”
Matthew Litt, a New Jersey attorney who has filed dozens of recent gambling addiction suits but is not involved in this week’s lawsuits, said gaining traction on such cases has been challenging because laws are outdated.
“There’s been no acknowledgment that you have a casino or a sportsbook … in your pocket 24 hours a day,” Litt told ESPN.
Hoekstra said her lawsuit is different because it claims physical harm instead of economic injury.
“We’re claiming that there is an actual physical harm that is being done through the addiction,” Hoekstra said. “And that is the difference with ours, that there is a defective product that was defectively, intentionally designed to cause this harm.”
A survey conducted by the National Council on Problem Gambling last year found that nearly 20 million adults reported experiencing at least one problem gambling behavior “many times” in the past year. That number marks a decrease from a spike during the COVID-19 pandemic but remains elevated compared to 2018, when legal sports betting began spreading around the nation.
The lawsuit cited a 2024 study of gambling in Connecticut that found that less than 2% of state residents are considered problem gamblers; but that 2% was responsible for 51% of the sports betting revenue in the state.
A February study conducted by the Harris Poll on behalf of the National Council on Problem Gambling found that 33% of respondents aged 21 to 44 had placed a sports bet before turning 21, the legal age to gamble in most states. Experts say young people are at greater risk for developing gambling problems.
In the social media lawsuit, attorneys alleged that the platforms borrowed “heavily from the behavioral and neurobiological techniques used by slot machines and exploited by the cigarette industry” to maximize youth engagement and drive advertising revenue. On Wednesday, a jury in Los Angeles ordered Meta and YouTube to pay $6 million in damages.
Disclosure: ESPN has a business partnership with DraftKings.
Leave a Reply