Fanduel Sportsbook Outage
Oct 12, 2020 Due to the technical issues, FanDuel was expected to restore their service by Monday and credit bettors and have those bettors receive “lossback” which is part of a losing bet that is rewarded back. CNN - New York (CNN Business) — Fanduel, the fantasy sports and online sports betting company, experienced outages on Sunday — the last day of regular season NFL games — preventing many of its customers from accessing its Sportsbook platform. Reports of glitches began around 12:30 pm ET, according to.
This past weekend wasn’t a great one for FanDuel and that had nothing to do with the company taking a bath on an NFL spread. What might be soon remembered as the Great FanDuel Data Outage of 2020 undoubtedly made life hell for the company’s customer service agents.
Still in the throngs of recovering from the mess, it’s unclear exactly what FanDuel intends to do to ensure the circumstances never take place again. Additionally, many DFS players aren’t happy with the compensation the company has offered.
The details on this past weekend’s FanDuel data outage
The service disruption wasn’t exactly on FanDuel’s part. More accurately, it took place within the company FanDuel contracts with to provide its live stat updates.
We would like to show you a description here but the site won’t allow us.
Our stat provider is currently experiencing a major service disruption. This may result in delays to in-game live scoring, however all stats will be updated prior to settlement of contests. We apologize for any inconvenience!
— FD Customer Support (@FanDuel_Support) October 11, 2020
So DFS players weren’t able to get live updates from ongoing NFL games. That’s a mere inconvenience, perhaps forcing players to keep track of stats manually in a throwback to a time Peter Falk referenced in “The Princess Bride” when all fantasy sports were scored that way.
Fanduel Sportsbook Outage Line
But there was a more serious consequence. FanDuel gives DFS players a “late swap” option for the late Sunday afternoon NFL games. Without live scoring updates, it was much more difficult for players to make those decisions.
It’s fair to speculate that some players may have placed higher in their pools if they had this information available in “real-time.” What might have made that situation worse, however, was FanDuel’s response:
“We will credit a 50% net lossback across impacted slates (where net losses above $10; paid as site credit; max $100 credit). Any user not credited under the lossback will receive a voucher to next week’s Sunday Million.”
Some players may have staked much more than $200 on their plays. Therefore, a $100 credit doesn’t even get them anywhere near to breaking even, much less make up for any winnings they might otherwise have enjoyed.
Perhaps most maddeningly for everyone involved, neither Sunday night nor Monday morning brought resolutions to the unsettled scoring.
We appreciate everyone's continued patience during our stats provider's Live Scoring outages this weekend. They have identified the cause and are working diligently to restore service. We recognize the importance of live scoring to the DFS experience.
— FD Customer Support (@FanDuel_Support) October 12, 2020
Our stats provider is still experiencing a major service disruption. We are working with them to have all player's scores available and finalized as soon as possible. We will provide any updates here as they happen, and once again appreciate everyone's patience.
— FD Customer Support (@FanDuel_Support) October 12, 2020
FanDuel did start to update the live scoring from Sunday’s contests on Monday afternoon, though DFS players with roster members slated to play Monday night should continue to monitor FanDuel’s social media accounts for updates.
That’s just the beginning of the unknown quantities at this point. FanDuel’s challenge now is to convince players they don’t need to fear this happening again.
What can FanDuel do to prevent this from happening again?
To really understand this situation, you need to understand why FanDuel has a live stats provider in the first place. Simply put, it’s cheaper to have a vendor supply that than for FanDuel to do that itself.
It’s no different than how most restaurants don’t grow their own produce or raise their own animals. Think of FanDuel as your favorite steakhouse and the stats service as the butcher.
It’s unclear whether FanDuel is shopping for new data providers at this point. Unfortunately, providers that can provide the information on that scale quickly and reliably aren’t exactly abundant.
FanDuel may also have a pretty airtight contract with that company for the service. As it’s a deal between two privately-owned companies, it’s hard to know for sure what the details are.
Another crucial detail is whether that contract gives FanDuel’s current provider exclusivity in that regard. If that isn’t the case, then the moniker of “putting all your eggs in one basket” applies to this situation.
A possible solution for FanDuel is having another service provider “on deck.” That way, if its primary provider experiences an outage, the “understudy” can step right in.
Outside of that, FanDuel could build out its own stats service, but that’s likely going to be quite expensive. Additionally, there’s no guarantee that it would be any less susceptible to technical problems than any vendor’s product.
So what’s likely going to happen is that the stats service will beef up its systems to try to prevent this from happening again, and then FanDuel will do its best to ease the pain of frustrated DFS players.
What can I do if I lost money due to this outage?
The best and first thing to do is to contact FanDuel’s customer service channels. You can live chat on the site, and there are also email and telephone options as well.
Fanduel Sportsbook Nj
Please try to remember that the person you’re dealing with wasn’t directly responsible for the data outage and likely can’t directly refund all your money. In other words, don’t shoot the messenger.
If you can’t reach a satisfactory result there, that will be the time when the location in which you played becomes of great importance. Not all jurisdictions regulate DFS contests the same.
In fact, many states don’t regulate DFS contests at all. If you’re in a place where DFS is in a “grey area” (neither explicitly legal nor explicitly illegal), your only other option might be to take FanDuel to small claims court.
That may prove foolhardy, however, as it may cost you more than you would win to do so.
Both companies involved, along with all affected players, would prefer this FanDuel data outage never takes place again. Hopefully, that will be the case and this will be an unsightly situation soon forgotten.
Thousands of FanDuel customers have been locked out of their accounts for more than 48 hours after the operator attempted to merge DFS, sportsbook and casino accounts in New Jersey and Pennsylvania.
Fanduel Sportsbook Pa
FanDuel fantasy customers first started reporting issues with the site on August 14 but it was up and running again by August 15. Any customers who lost money because of the downtime were reimbursed.
Then on Sunday, August 16, FanDuel warned its NJ and PA sportsbooks would be out of action for “12-15 hours” as it performed “platform upgrades.” However, three days later, some customers are still unable to log in to their accounts.
An update for @FanDuel fantasy customers: pic.twitter.com/rkkLixTT3R
— FD Customer Support (@FanDuel_Support) August 17, 2020
What’s not working at FanDuel?
Customers have reported a variety of issues, including:
- Inability to sign in
- Balances wiped to zero
- Failed location checks despite being in NJ/PA
- Deleted account history
- Unable to deposit
Its been 3 days since I have been able to log in to my account pic.twitter.com/lUDbDXTaOS
— Zak (@zkablouti) August 19, 2020
The outage comes at an inopportune time as the NBA postseason kicked off Monday.
However, a FanDuel spokesperson said the work had been going on behind the scenes for months, but ran into problems in the final stages over the weekend.
“An upgrade like this takes months to prepare, our engineering teams have worked tirelessly to get ready for Sunday/Monday and unfortunately we ran into issues that prolonged the outage,” said FanDuel’s publicity director Kevin Hennessey.
The operator successfully completed similar account combinations in West Virginia and Indiana earlier this year. And it’s possible the extra load put on the platform by NBA playoff traffic helped cause the issues.
Some customers have also not heard back support staff thanks to the massive volume of complaints.
What was meant to happen?
“We were migrating our account and wallet functions, so customers would have single logins and one wallet in PA and NJ for their fantasy, sportsbook and casino accounts,” Hennessey explained.
“The user experience of our platforms have been significantly improved for customers that choose to play on multiple products. It will also give them a single view of their balances, transactions history and game play.
Fanduel Sportsbook Michigan
FanDuel problems should be fixed “very soon”
Fanduel Sportsbook Outage Line
Hennessy declined to share how many accounts were affected. However, he said once users fully verified their newly merged accounts, correct details would be shown.
“We expect to fully verify and update the account interface of users affected in this manner very soon,” he added.
If there’s any silver lining for FanDuel, favorites across NBA, MLB and NHL went 20-1 on Monday, giving rival books a bath. Timing is everything, they say.