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CHONGQING, CHINA - FEBRUARY 3: In this photo illustration, a smartphone displays the logo of DraftKings Inc. (NASDAQ: DKNG), a U.S.-based digital sports entertainment and online gaming company offering sports betting, daily fantasy sports and iGaming products, in front of a screen showing the company's latest stock market chart on February 3, 2026, in Chongqing, China. Alongside it is a stock image showing multiple AI apps.
If you’re a DraftKings user who feels that the app has recently been offering you a number of enticements in order to continue to place bets, it might be time to re-evaluate your strategy, or your views on sports betting as a whole.
A new investigation released by the New York Times revealed that DraftKings has been using AI in order to pick out gamblers that are most likely to lose bets and pursue them, finding ways to entice them to either continue to bet or, in some cases, increase the frequency of their betting.
The situation continues a troubling trend in the gambling industry in which sportsbooks, including DraftKings and FanDuel, prey on high-volume bettors who have a tendency to lose large amounts of money.
How Does DraftKings Use AI To Scope Out Likely Losers?
So, how exactly does the scheme work? That’s a good question!
According the report, DraftKings took customer betting records in 2023 and built a machine learning model that’s lone goal was to answer one question: Who was more likely to respond to promotions by gambling — and losing — more?
After the model identified those bettors, DraftKings would then entice them to bet more by offering perks such as free bets and bonuses.
The model scored bettors based on their habits: The higher the score, the more money a gambler was likely to lose for each promotion offered.
“Isn’t this extremely predatory?” you may find yourself asking. Yes, yes it is.
“We are looking for traits and features that we can target that indicate a good investment. The best investment would be a problem gambler,” former DraftKings data analyst Jayden Butts said of the practice.
Since then, DraftKings has only doubled down, according to several former employees who worked on the models.
“It is as predatory as it sounds,” another former analyst told the New York Times. “If you lose more, we give you more, so you keep playing more.”
Safe to say, if DraftKings is offering you things like free bets and bonuses on the regular, it’s probably a good sign that you should stop, or at least slow down, your betting habits.