Wanna Bet These Ads Are Misleading?

More and more states are allowing betting on sporting events, and that has resulted in a huge increase in advertising promotions by betting site operators. And nothing attracts gamblers more than offers of free money.

But some of these ads can be misleading and that has led to a series of class action lawsuits against Caesars Sportsbook for ads like this:

The lawsuit contends:

… if a new user places a $1,000 “risk-free” or “free” first bet at Caesars Sportsbook, that person is required to deposit and wager $1,000 in real dollars with the website. If the bet is successful, the winnings are paid out as usual. If the bet loses, however, the customer is credited with the amount lost, not in cash, but in bet credits that can only be used on the Caesars Sportsbook and that expire in just 14 days.

So basically an offer like this only replaces the money you lose with their own funny money but doesn’t allow you to withdraw it. That is not clearly explained in the ads and thus forms the basis for these lawsuits.

One Ohio state gambling official explained the issue this way:

*MOUSE PRINT:

“If something is claiming to be free or risk-free, then it has to absolutely not require the patron to incur any loss or risk their own money,” Matthew Schuler, executive director of Ohio’s Casino Control Commission, said in a recent interview. “Disclosing the risks within the terms and conditions isn’t good enough,” he added.

The parent company of Caesars Sportsbook a couple of weeks ago asked a judge to either dismiss one of the cases or require the plaintiff to go to arbitration as the terms and conditions provided when she signed up for the promotion. The judge has not ruled on that motion yet.

The misleading nature of these promotions is not limited to Caesars. Here is a promotion from FanDuel, another sportsbook, with Rob Gronkowski promising that new customers will “get up to $3,000 back if they don’t win their first bet.”

At the end of the commercial the announcer repeats that customers will “get up to $3,000 back if you don’t win your first bet.”

*MOUSE PRINT:

The unspoken part of the claim is that the money back is in the form of “bonus bets” — merchandise credit, if you will, that cannot be withdrawn. It must be used in 14 days. All that is only stated onscreen, and not all in readable-size type.

But it gets worse. Let’s say you’ve earned $100 in bonus bets and you bet that whole $100 on a sporting event. Lucky you, your bet wins $150. When you go to withdrawn your $150, you may discover that all you really won is $50 because they substract the value of the wager you made using the house’s money. [We confirmed this with a FanDuel spokesperson.]

*MOUSE PRINT:

*After your bet settles (and if it wins), you’ll get to pocket all of the winnings but the initial bonus bet portion of your wager will not be returned to your wallet.” -FanDuel website

As with everything else we spotlight in Mouse Print*, you’ve always got to read the fine print.

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