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I deliberately bet like a problem gambler. DraftKings made me a VIP.

Saturday, September 26, 2026 11:55 AM
Image aggregated from ProPublica.
  • Jake Pearson, ProPublica

It was late May, the French Open was on and DraftKings was pushing me into the action.

A promotion pinged on my phone. “BET & GET,” it boomed, offering to boost my profits if I threw down on tennis, punctuating the point with a cartoon stack of cash. I was already in the middle of a two-hour betting spree, ripping 64 wagers on the clay courts of Paris from my office chair in New York City.

A $75 bet that Claire Liu would win the fifth point of her first set tiebreak against Maria Sakkari? Wrong. How about an easy $300 on Francisco Comesana to win the first game of the second set against Luciano Darderi?