“You’re going to double your first deposit, up to six hundred dollars! That means that if you put in one hundred bucks, you get two hundred to play with.” — DraftKings advertisement.
If you watch sports on television, you have probably seen advertisements for daily fantasy sports games run by DraftKings. You may have been tempted by its offer of a 100% bonus. DraftKings promises that its “free bonus” will “double your cash” up to $600.
Maybe you were even taken in by this scam. If so, you soon realized – after paying your money – that you received only 4% of your first deposit and that you had to continue to play, pay 25 times the amount of your first payment, and do so within the first four months, to receive the bonus – and that it would never “double your cash.”
Millions of fantasy sports fans have been taken in. To force DraftKings to make good on its promise, we brought a lawsuit in the United States District Court for the Southern District of Illinois on behalf of fantasy-sports participants in Illinois and Missouri and another in the District of Massachusetts.
Click here to see the Complaint in the Illinois case of Hemrich et al. v. DraftKings, filed by the Law Office of Richard S. Cornfeld and Leritz, Plunkett & Bruning.
Here is what the Direct Marketing Association says about this kind of unethical practice: “If [consumers] respond to a ‘free’ offer in which additional items need to be purchased, … they should be clearly informed of the terms and conditions in the initial promotion before they are billed.” That couldn’t be clearer. You should have been told before you were billed, not after you paid your money.
These two cases have now been combined with 84 other lawsuits in a multi-district proceeding styled, In re: Daily Fantasy Sports Litigation, MDL No. 16-02677-GAO (D. Mass.). On March 31, 2016, Judge O’Toole appointed Rick Cornfeld to the Plaintiffs’ Executive Committee.
