I Posed as a Problem Gambler. DraftKings Made Me a VIP

I Posed as a Problem Gambler. DraftKings Made Me a VIP propublica.org

Amid growing public health concerns, operators like DraftKings have touted “responsible gaming” tools and prompts. But as I went off the deep end, I found they were no match for the incentives and product design…

76 points•theblazehen•4 days ago•25 comments•

#draftkings #gambler #vip #posed #draftkings made #problem gambler #amid #public

25 comments

jgalt2124 days ago

Matt Levine discussed this relevant NY Times article.

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/09/19/business/draftkings-ai.ht...

Pull quote:

> Ms. Kalani said that company leaders made a “collective decision” not to use predictive technology for problem gambling. “We evaluated that it wasn’t evidence-based,” she said.

gruez4 days ago

Did you mean to link to the actual bloomberg article?

https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/newsletters/2026-09-22/who... (scroll down to "Gambler identification")

kmeisthax3 days ago

> If a customer waves too many red flags, she said, the company will proactively close the account. But when I asked how often this actually happens, DraftKings wouldn’t say.

DraftKings will also ban your account if you're too good at betting. The perverse thing about sports betting is that it's technically a game of skill, but the sports gambling companies really, really would rather it not be one.

chistev3 days ago

> it's technically a game of skill

It's not. It's a game of luck.

kmeisthax2 days ago

They actually do mention this later in the article than I had read when I initially posted the comment. You can use sports statistics knowledge to find under-priced bets and arbitrage off of them. This is a skill component: people who have more statistical knowledge about the sport will be able to make better bets than people who are going full degen on parlays and microbets. I don't mean just "watch the sport every day" but, like, actually compiling spreadsheets full of past sports statistics to calculate odds of specific events so you can find bets that are out of the money.

The reason why this matters is because, for a while, the sports betting apps were insisting that they were games of skill, specifically because a savvy player could do this. The problem is that the sports betting apps do not want you to be doing this, because even the tiny, minor bit of their platform that can be advantage-played is too skill-based for their liking. They wanted the regulators to see the skill and the players to see a slot machine.

ChrisArchitect4 days ago

DraftKings Uses A.I. To Target the Gamblers Likeliest to Lose

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49765288

N_Lens4 days ago

Expected. I'm always surprised that virtue signals like "gamble responsibly" or "corporate social responsibility" or the usual greenwashing campaigns work. People are seemingly very gullible.

cyanydeez4 days ago

those arn't greenwashing. They're carveouts by Corporations to prevent liability from acruing.

I have no idea what bridge you live under, but ignoring regulatory capture seems pretty obtuse.

rythmshifter4 days ago

I agree with your sentiment here, but was the bridge comment necessary?

Ban all gambling in my opinion

BatchJob3 days ago

I have been seeing alot of this finger pointing discussion in relation to gambling platforms. If you spend large amount of money at many types of businesses you will be "promoted to"... "VIP".

I really don't see an issue with this. People behind this are generally people who are making cases against legalized gambling by pointing to people they view as irresponsible.

They are cut from the same cloth of those that claim facebooks web pages are "addictive". I dare an html page to addict me.

Read the full thread on Hacker News →

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