DraftKings employs around 5,000 and its 10 million-plus customers helped generate $1.5 billion in revenues in the second quarter alone this year.
DraftKings employs around 5,000 and its 10 million-plus customers helped generate $1.5 billion in revenues in the second quarter alone this year.Charles Krupa/Associated Press
The full fallout on the NBA and all sports leagues has yet to be felt after Thursday’s explosive allegations of illegal sports gambling that included high-profile NBA figures.
But Boston’s DraftKings, a giant among legalized sports betting operators, sees the episode in part as validation of the legal safeguards that flagged the alleged wrongdoers in the first place.
“We fundamentally believe that regulated online sports betting is the best way forward to monitor for and detect suspicious behavior while offering consumer protections backed by advanced technology, neither of which exist in the pervasive illegal market,” read part of a comment emailed to the Globe by a DraftKings spokesperson. “While regulation cannot eliminate all concerns related to game integrity, it significantly reduces risks by enabling collaboration between operators, leagues, teams, and relevant authorities to identify and hold accountable anyone engaged in illegal behavior.”
Evidence from the investigation has yet to be revealed but some likely stemmed from the “collaboration” referred to in the DraftKings statement, streams of betting data provided 24/7 by DraftKings and its competitors to companies such as IC360 and the International Betting Integrity Association.
If and when IC360 and IBIA detect irregularities in betting patterns, they alert sports betting operators, who then decide whether to take a particular bet on a game or an entire game off the market.
An example of an irregularity would be a flag that goes up when a customer who usually makes $5 bets places, say, $500 on a prop bet about whether a player will score over or under a certain number of points.
Other irregularities the monitoring services keep an eye on are for money laundering and a game that’s not playing out as expected and could raise integrity suspicions.
Whatever the example, the point DraftKings raised is that in a regulated market it’s much harder to implement a sports graft operation without anyone noticing than in the illegal market.
DraftKings employs around 5,000 and its 10 million-plus customers helped generate $1.5 billion in revenues in the second quarter alone this year.
The company also is an official sports betting partner of the NBA.
Its framing of this most recent scandal matters almost as much as the league’s does, since both stand to lose a great deal if the public loses faith in the integrity of games being played and bet on.
“We know our fans value the authenticity of competition, and we take the responsibility of reporting suspicious activity seriously,” said the spokesperson. “As a proud partner of the NBA, DraftKings remains committed to working closely with the league to ensure the continued integrity of the game.”
DraftKings declined to make anyone from the company available for an on-the-record interview.
Michael Silverman can be reached at michael.silverman@globe.com.