The Public Health Advocacy Institute and its Center for Public Health Litigation has filed a class action lawsuit against DraftKings in the state of Massachusetts.
The complaint is in reference to citizens in The Bay State who opened DraftKings Sportsbook accounts, in response to a $1,000 bonus sign-up promotion that was advertised by DraftKings.
Within the lawsuit, it states that people were not aware that, to qualify for the $1,000 sign-up bonus, new customers needed to make an initial deposit of $5,000.
Players would then need to gamble $25,000 on certain qualifying bets over a certain time period and, after all that was done, they would receive non-withdrawable credits to use on the DraftKings Sportsbook platform.
Some of the points in the complaint were as follows: “DraftKings knew, or should have known, that its advertisement and promotion was deceptive to its target customers, who were customers new to sports betting and who were extremely unlikely to understand the details of the promotion; even if it were in readable English on the company’s platform or in a font size that a reasonable consumer could be expected to actually read.
“DraftKings knowingly and unfairly designed its promotion to maximize the number of consumers that would sign up for its sports gambling platform, the number of bets that would be placed through the platform, and the amount of money that would be placed on bets through its platforms.
"This is a particularly unfair business practice because of the addictive nature of the underlying product offered by the defendant.”
