A major sports betting operator suffered an outage on Thursday, costing customers the opportunity to place wagers for several hours on a big sports day.
DraftKings Sportsbook’s customer support acknowledged on social media site X that it was “experiencing issues with certain features” across all U.S. markets on Thursday morning, but the issues were fixed and the app’s functions returned around 2 p.m. ET.
Sportsbook functionality has been fully restored. Thanks for sticking with us! https://t.co/OdT8jnJkcx
— DraftKings CX Team (@DK_Assist) October 10, 2024
Some customers described receiving error messages when attempting to place a bet. Others said their bets weren’t showing up in the app at all. When clicking on some markets, the wager wouldn’t go into the betslip and a message saying it was no longer available popped up.
The outage was “serious” and a “nightmare” situation, according to a report from Boston 25 News.
“We are working on resolving this as quickly as possible,” DraftKings said in the social media statement.
DraftKings currently operates in 25 U.S. states.
Heavy volume
The timing couldn’t have been worse for a weekday, and it was imperative that DraftKings fix the problems heading into a volume-filled Thursday evening.
There are a pair of American League Divisional Series playoff games scheduled, with the Cleveland Guardians versus the Detroit Tigers, and the New York Yankees against the Kansas City Royals.
The NFL’s Thursday night game features the San Francisco 49ers at the Seattle Seahawks, who are a 3.5-point home underdog.
College football has three Group of 5 games scheduled, and the NHL’s first week of the regular season is highlighted by nine Thursday games.
Game 1 of the WNBA Finals between the Minnesota Lynx and New York Liberty is scheduled as well.
One customer asked DraftKings on X if it could pull their money out of their online sportsbook account so they could transfer it to rival FanDuel to get bets in for Thursday.
DraftKings replied with a message about contacting customer support through email.
