State regulators have levied $125,000 dollars in fines for violations by the operators of the online gambling company FanDuel.
There were five violations that included allowing bets that are not legal in Iowa on the Superbowl, soccer matches and golf matches. And the largest fine of $30,000 was for not having working options for responsible gaming.
FanDuel spokesman Ben Roth represented the company before the Iowa Racing and Gaming Commission Friday. “We take responsibility for the matters represented in the settlement before the Commission today and understand that we did not meet the high standard that we hold for ourselves,” he says.
Roth says they have been working to be sure all the issues are corrected. “In response to the issues before you today, FanDuel has worked to remediate the various root causes through a combination of manual remediation efforts. That includes increased training, more detailed checklists and runbooks for the deployment of content and of course, automation wherever possible to avoid the potential for manual error,” Roth says.
Roth says they refunded money to bettors where they could. “FanDuel has addressed each issue by ensuring that no impacted customer has been adversely affected by these issues and sandal has disgorged itself as any resulting revenue as a result of these,” Roth says.
Commissioners expressed concern that it took too long to report the problem with the responsible gaming issue, and most of the violations came in the same year. Commission chair Daryle Olsen says that was a big issue. “Five counts within a very short period of time is just too much, you know, and so and I know they’re dealing with a big volume. I believe FanDuel is our number two operator in the state. But we just expect more,” he says.
Olsen says they can’t treat online providers different than the ones that operate at a casino. “I think in fairness, the Commission has to look at how we treat our out of state operators versus our brick and mortar casinos, because we need to be consistent and that’s all we’re trying to do. We expect more,” Olsen says.
Olsen says every state has different regulations for sports betting, and Iowa’s regulations have to be enforced. “I think our our job is to tell them what we expect, lay out the concerns, and then hopefully they go back and fix it and we don’t have to deal with this again,” he says.
One of the violations involved only $330 in wagers, another was pulled before it was used, while some $89,000 was bet on the golf wagers and $62,000 was bet on the Olympic wagers.
