Sunday night was supposed to be the time when thousands of customers are being lured on gambling platforms to bet on the Super Bowl. Unfortunately, right before the game’s kick-off on February 7th, some of the most popular betting apps experienced technical disruptions, leaving the biggest sports betting platforms struggling to fix the unexpected problems.
Reportedly, technical issues were experienced by the gambling apps of DraftKings, FanDuel, Penn National Gaming and BetMGM, with the companies’ technical staff trying to fix the platforms’ issues. Despite their efforts, technicians were unable to solve the problems by the end of the game. At the same time, other sports betting platforms, such as the ones of Pointsbet and William Hill, were unaffected by technical issues.
After finding themselves unable to place bets on the game, punters were not exactly kind and understanding towards the gambling companies affected by the technical disruptions.
Some ten minutes before the game’s start, BetMGM’s application crashed, with the retail sportsbooks of MGM finding out they could not accept bets. Punters signaled about the problem on social media, complaining they were unable to place bets, while technicians were doing their best to find and fix the problem. As mentioned above, the problem had not been fixed by the end of the Super Bowl, and the operator was not immediately able to settle wagers.
Outage Faced by BetMGM, DraftKings, FanDuel and Penn National’s Apps
Before the beginning of the game, FanDuel ads promoted the ease of punters signing up for free and playing on the company’s betting platform.
Unfortunately, the operator was among the companies affected by the outages that prevented consumers from placing bets on the game. The company issued a statement and explained that the technical issues were “intermittent” and occurred as a result of the high customer demand. FanDuel further insisted that its betting platform never stopped operating, but the most serious disruptions of the app were experienced by Michigan players.
The company further noted that despite the technical issues during the Super Bowl event, it paid out a total of $27 million to customers, of which $17 million were received by new customers.
As mentioned above, the betting application of Penn National Gaming also experienced a crash at the time of the event, with the company putting the blame for the issues on third parties. Still, the company did not actually blame one of its partners, Kambi, for the outage, unlike another sports betting operator – DraftKings.
DraftKings issued a statement, explaining that the technical disruptions of its app had been caused by an increase in traffic, which eventually had resulted in problems for its backend provider. The gambling operator further noted that its daily fantasy sports and pools products that are supported by in-house technology, were not experiencing any technical issues.
In its turn, Kambi explained that at the time, it had seen the biggest betting volumes in its history. The company further noted that the problems experienced at the time of the Super Bowl event were associated with one specific player-related bet offer.
DraftKings gave $20 credits to its players considered to have been affected by the technical glitches.
