Try to hit it big
The highly-anticipated 2021 DraftKings Sports Betting National Championship took place this weekend and it did not go well. In fact, “took place” is being generous. Technical issues caused significant problems, tilting the playing field, and eventually resulted in the competition having to end early.
After problems marred the 2019 edition of the event, DraftKings was looking forward to redemption this year. The contest was fairly simple: participants bet on NFL, NBA, and college football games and the players who make the most money win.
The buy-in was $10,000, with $4,500 of that going to the tournament prize pool. Another $500 went to DraftKings and players used the remaining $5,000 as their starting bankroll. Players could place bets from 6:00pm ET on Friday, November 5 until 1:00pm Sunday, November 7. Live bets were forbidden, but other than that most wagers were fair game. Players were eligible to win leaderboard prizes as long as they bet at least $1,000 in total. Contestants kept their ending bankroll.
Players could place bets in person in Weehawken, New Jersey or online in ten other states.
First prize was $1 million and a ticket into the Tournament of Champions, with payouts going down to 25th place.
Can’t win a betting contest if you can’t bet
Unfortunately, technical problems reared their head early. Some players were unable to place bets, some found they couldn’t bet more than a dollar at a time, while others had no issues whatsoever. Contestants posted their frustrations on Twitter, as one would do:
Complaints about the unfairness of the contest continued into Friday night:
On Saturday morning, DraftKing’s sportsbook director Johnny Avello went on VSiN, the DraftKings-owned sports betting television network, to discuss the situation. He said no participant would end up out any money.
“Last night we kicked off the contest and unfortunately there were some betting markets that were affected and contestants were unable to place their bets and this was consistent for all the users,” Avello said.
He added: “What we decided to do was to make our customers whole. If you went bust last night, and you’re out of money, you’re out of the contest.”
So everybody who played, no matter if they lost their entire bankroll or if they lost some of it and no matter when they stopped playing, would get their losses returned to them. If someone lost $2,000 of their original $5,000 and decided to quit, DraftKings would pay them back $2,000. If someone went bust completely, they were still out of the tournament, but DraftKings would give them their $5,000 back.
Anyone who profited would keep their winnings, as normal.
So that was great news, but Avello also announced that DraftKings was closing registration Saturday morning, much earlier than the 6:00pm Saturday that was originally planned. Despite the technical problems, this frustrated potential players, who may have been waiting until later to enter.
In the end, there was still a winner, “tus0323,” who banked the $1 million top prize. They only made six bets, but one was a gigantic score: a $24,900 parlay on the Jacksonville Jaguars +14.5 plus the Buffalo Bills/Jaguars game under 49 plus the Denver Broncos +6.5 in the first half. The Jags upset the bills by the paltry score of 9-6, while the Broncos shutout the Dallas Cowboys in the first half.
The $24,900 bet turned into almost $145,000 in profit for tus0323. In the end, he ran his bankroll from $5,000 to $169,747.17.
