What’s worse than losing a bet? Losing another. A longtime officially licensed sports gambling “partner” of the National Football League and Major League Baseball conducts AI-enhanced “machine learning” data studies on its users to identify those most likely to consistently lose so it can flood them with incentives to keep wagering, whistleblowers say. For decades, critics have accused professional sports of alienating fans with its Big Money obsessions. Welcome to the new era, where haughty disaffection gives way to malicious plundering on a personal level. In terms of customer abuse, it’s hard to top.
Jayden Butts, a former data analyst at online sports gambling giant DraftKings, told The New York Times in an article published Sept. 19 that in 2023 he was tasked with testing a pattern-detecting model to uncover chronic losing customers so they can be strung along with promo offers that keep them on the hook.
Butts quickly realized the company wasn’t interested in attracting responsible bettors.
“We are looking for traits and features that we can target that indicate a good investment,” he told The Times. “The best investment would be a problem gambler.”
‘It Is as Predatory as It Sounds’
If it sounds like the proverbial bartender knowingly overserving a soused alcoholic bar patron, that may be because several other ex-employees state that is exactly the tack DraftKings was pursuing with this ruthless business plan.
“Since Butts ran those tests, DraftKings has continued to hone its methods, using data science, to target losing gamblers with promotions that encourage more betting, according to six former employees who worked on them,” The Times’ article continues. It goes on to say that four more former employees also accused DraftKings of stalling or squashing the use of similar tech to predict who might develop a problem based on their betting activity. Many companies use such predictive models so that they can identify someone on the edge of crisis and intervene.
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“It is as predatory as it sounds,” a former DraftKings analyst who quit in 2024 told the paper. “If you lose more, we give you more, so you keep playing more.”
But for the mighty National Football League, DraftKings is a highly valued corporate partner. In August, the league announced it had struck a “multi-year deal” with the company and two other “leading sports betting operators ahead of the 2026 season.”
DraftKings has long had a lucrative relationship with MLB as well.
“In 2012, MLB helped ignite the daily fantasy industry by becoming our first-ever league partner, and that same foresight has persisted over the years as our organizations look to disrupt and innovate further through this expansion,” DraftKings co-founder Matt Kalish was quoted as saying in a 2021 company release announcing a renewed deal with the league. “As we adapt and scale integrations within the constantly evolving sports landscape, MLB and DraftKings will again shape the future of fan engagement in baseball and beyond.”
A Sports Gambling Pot of Gold
There’s no mystery why the two aggressively profit-driven leagues, which once could make legitimate claims to being cherished parts of the American cultural heritage, have gotten into bed with the bookies. The sheer size of the sports gambling market today beggars description.
“The sports betting industry hit a record revenue figure of $16.96 billion in 2025, the American Gaming Association stated [Feb. 26].” ESPN reported early this year. “The association's figures showed that Americans legally bet $166.94 billion on sports in 2025, an 11% increase from 2024.”
Remarkably, the leagues remain willfully ignorant of the harm they are causing fans by taking the dirty gambling industry money. Even worse, they see themselves as wholly innocent victims of angry bettors who fly off the handle after losing wagers they can’t afford to make.
“Five professional sports leagues and their players associations have aligned forces to ask for protections for players and staff who face threats and harassment from sports bettors,” the Associated Press reported Sept. 15. In a letter sent to gambling regulators in 35 states and the District of Columbia, “the NFL, Major League Baseball, NBA, Major League Soccer and the NHL and the leagues’ players associations asked that rules be established to permanently revoke betting privileges for anyone found to have threatened or ‘abusively harassed’ any professional or amateur athlete, coach, official or team personnel,” AP relates.
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“Too often, individuals who lose sports bets direct threatening and harassing messages toward players coaches and their families via social media and in-person interactions,” the leagues whined.
Why is this happening to us? Perhaps financially partnering with gambling entities that deliberately lock onto problem gamblers with the intention of bleeding them dry has something to do with sparking this crisis?
As Liberty Nation News detailed last year, the entitled sense of disdain pro sports leagues and their well-paid athletes openly display today towards the unwashed masses of fans who pay to watch their product has grown more insidious as the gambling revenue rolls in.
You Can Always Blame the Fans
In May 2025, pitcher Lance McCullers Jr. got shelled in a start for the Houston Astros. McCullers had become unpopular among the team’s fans due to an $85 million contract that was not remotely backed up by his performance. Instead of taking the boos that come with such immense financial compensation in stride, McCullers decided to throw the entire Astro fanbase under the bus.
“I understand people are very passionate and people love the Astros and love sports. But threatening to find my kids and murder them is a little bit tough to deal with,” McCullers said.
“There have been many threats over the years, aimed at me mostly,” he continued. “But I think bringing kids into the equation, threatening to find them, or next time they see us in public they’re going to stab my kids to death, things like that, is tough to hear as a dad.”
Houston manager Joe Espada fully backed up McCullers’ scolding of Astro fans “after all he's done for the city, for this team.”
The feigned outrage was self-serving and pathetic.
“It sounds horrific, and indeed it is,” we wrote as the story broke. “But what McCullers without a doubt knows, and what MLB indisputably is fully aware of, is that irrationally irate losing gamblers spouting off on social media are behind almost all such threats.”
Indeed that was the case here as well. The entire incident turned out to be one anonymous social media post sent by an “overseas” gambler who was “frustrated and inebriated” after losing a bet. No apologies to Astros fans were made by McCullers or the team.
Besides providing convenient cover for a struggling overpaid pitcher after a poor outing, the incident shows how completely out of touch the pro sports world is about the inevitable consequences of its linking of arms with the gambling industry. If the pampered players and agonized executives don’t want to put up with such “highly disturbing” incidents in the future, an easy remedy is suggested: Stop taking the “gaming” money.
Don’t hold your breath waiting for that to happen.
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