There is still some speculation as to why William Hill even bothered to bring this suit; some have suggested that it was simply a competitive desire to see FanDuel’s reputation damaged. To be fair, FanDuel were clearly in the wrong here.
The long and short of it is that Will Hill released a How to Bet guide after opening their new sportsbook at Monmouth Park Racetrack in New Jersey. FanDuel then pretty much reproduced the guide verbatim, without permission, when they opened their services at the Meadowlands Raceway. In New Jersey. A month later.
The reproduction came complete with near-identical or identical diagrams. One page featured William Hill’s name. It seems to have been a pretty open and shut case.
Still, the UK bookmaker has just dismissed the case, presumably with some undisclosed out-of-court settlement between the firms. It seems likely that a fairly low-ranking member of Fanduel’s editorial team was responsible for this misstep and that it somehow got through all the steps preceding publication without being noticed. It seems unlikely, to say the least, that a firm would consciously opt to plagiarise outright the whole of a rival’s published content.
There are also those who have suggested that Will Hill should have saved everybody some time and money and just settled this out of court in the first place, without all the headlines. They’re well within their right to publicly cry foul at such behaviour, though.
In an amusing twist, William Hill US CEO Joe Asher stated to the press that part of the settlement would be used to fund creative writing program scholarships across New Jersey universities. Well played, Will Hill US.
