New Jersey gambling regulator fines $40K two sportsbooks and supplier

The New Jersey Division of Gaming Enforcement (DGE) has issued fines totaling $40,000 to two sportsbooks and a tech company over various violations related to the acceptance of unauthorized wagers on sports events.

Traders’ mistakes cost Kambi and Rush Street Interactive NJ

The fines were confirmed in an official public release by the regulator, who decided to fine DraftKings the bulk of the penalty, $20,000. A $10,000 fine was handed down to Rush Street Interactive NJ, and another $10,000 fine was slapped on Kambi, a tech provider that supplies data and odds feeds to licensed and regulated sportsbooks in the Garden State and across the United States.

The cases date quite a while back, which indicates the regulator’s ability to uncover past transgressions and act accordingly. The DGE found out that Rush Street Interactive accepted 16 bets amounting to $1,523 in November 2021 on a college basketball game between the University of North Carolina-Asheville and Tennessee Tech University.

The issue stemmed from the fact that at the time of accepting the wagers, the game had already concluded, and North Carolina had won. Kambi and Rush Street Interactive both worked with the regulator on the case and said that a trader had not been able to remove the game markets in time due to a connectivity error.

However, Kambi has made sure to provide its traders with guidance on what to do if such events occur on their watch. A similar case was detected in March 2022, when Rush Street Interactive accepted seven bets on Magic City Jai Alai games after the games had been concluded. The total wagers placed amounted to $2,900, the regulator said.

Kambi offered a similar explanation in that case as well, citing connectivity issues as to why the original error occurred. Another case involved Rush Street Interactive accepting 13 wagers totaling $8,150 after a Professional Golf Association event had begun.

DraftKings offered unaccepted markets for nine months

The issue in this case was that Rush Street Interactive had offered pre-match odds. Kambi told the regulator that a newly-trained trader had failed to act in time and close the pre-game odds so that no one could bet on those odds after the event’s start.

As to DraftKings, the company was found in violation of accepting bets on unapproved Russian basketball for nine months between 2020 and 2021, and has totaled wagers worth $61,000, resulting in the present fine of $20,000.

Image credit: Unsplash.com