In July, Phillies first baseman Bryce Harper stepped into a pile of No. 2, thanks to a personalized video purchased by FanDuel in order to ensure that a valued customer (i.e., a consistent loser) would keep losing.
The situation opened a can that contains more than a few worms.
Via David Gambacorta of the Philadelphia Inquirer, a FanDuel executive recently admitted in a letter to Congress that, over the last two years, FanDuel has sent roughly 30 personalized videos from “athletes and entertainers” to other consistent losers.
“On occasion, FanDuel has arranged a personalized video message, almost always through publicly available services, as a token of appreciation for a customer’s loyalty in choosing FanDuel over its competitors,” FanDuel senior V.P. for public policy and sustainability Cory Fox wrote on September 24.
Fox claimed that the videos are not used to “induce customers to continue gambling.”
Of course they’re aimed at getting the losers to keep losing. It’s all part of the broader relationship between VIP (which should stand for “very inept prognosticators”) hosts and their clients.
FanDuel declined to disclose the 30 “athletes and entertainers.” They should. Without that information, it’s possible that one or more of the videos came from NFL players.
Either way, it’s another example of the things sportsbooks will do to keep the cash flowing. Their only commodity is money. The more of your money they keep, the more money they make.
And outfits like FanDuel don’t end up being worth many billions of dollars without many billions of dollars flowing from the customer to the company.
The best news is that Congress is exercising oversight of the industry. As the Wild West days of Everybody Bet Now! continue, meaningful regulation of the industry is long overdue.
