DraftKings has told three Democratic members of Congress that its VIP and rewards programmes do not target people showing signs of problem gambling or seek out customers likely to lose more money. The six-page response answered an Oct. 22 inquiry from Sen. Richard Blumenthal and Reps. Paul Tonko and Valerie Foushee about the company’s VIP and rewards practices.
A copy of the Nov. 5 letter published by InGame said DraftKings Rewards automatically enrols customers when they open accounts. The programme, renamed from Dynasty Rewards in August, has five levels, from Bronze to Onyx. Fewer than 1% of the company’s customers are in its Diamond and Onyx tiers, where personal hosts and individual incentives are available.
The company said hosts must escalate signs of potentially problematic play to its Responsible Engagement Team, with crisis cases prioritised. Each host is randomly assigned 10 customers a month for responsible-engagement checks, due between the 15th and the end of the month. Hosts who do not complete all their quarterly checks lose eligibility for incentive-based compensation for that quarter.
DraftKings said its ineligible-customer list covers self-exclusions, cool-offs, other responsible-engagement restrictions and universal marketing opt-outs. The list is updated almost hourly, and its messaging systems use it before sending email, push notifications or in-app messages. Customers returning from self-exclusion receive no proactive promotions for 30 days; the blackout is 30 days after a cool-off of more than 60 days and 10 days after a shorter one.
About 80% to 90% of Sportsbook promotions are offered site-wide, DraftKings said, while 10% to 20% go to customer cohorts or individuals through hosts. It said human employees, rather than automated systems, decide whom hosts contact and what they offer. Its data-science models select audiences and offers based on preferences such as sport and offer size, while employees construct, price and approve promotions.
The company denied using artificial intelligence to identify likely losing customers or those displaying problem-gambling indicators. It distinguished that from its use of data science and machine learning to target promotions by customer preference. DraftKings also said it was aware of only one Cameo message sent by its loyalty team, from basketball player Miles McBride, and did not rely on personalised content from professional athletes or major celebrities as an incentive.
The response did not disclose average gains or losses for rewards members. DraftKings said a requested six-month pre-enrolment measure was not relevant because customers are automatically enrolled upon opening accounts and most had no prior platform activity. It also does not publicly report revenue by rewards tier.
DraftKings pointed lawmakers to My Stat Sheet, a tool introduced in March 2024 that displays deposits, wagers and net wins and losses over several periods, including the life of an account. Nearly half of players visited it in its first year, producing 13 million unique visits.
The letter came amid wider regulatory and political scrutiny. A New York Times investigation alleged that DraftKings used machine-learning models to identify customers likely to respond to promotions by gambling and losing more, an allegation the company disputes. Massachusetts regulators have separately reviewed VIP programmes, finding that sportsbooks restricted regular winners while extending VIP rewards primarily to frequent losers; the commission’s research director said such programmes were associated with higher-risk gambling behaviour.
As covered in August, FanDuel gave the same lawmakers a similar defence of its VIP programme, saying it operated under the company’s broader monitoring and exclusion rules. Blumenthal and Tonko also back the SAFE Bet Act, a 2025 federal proposal that would restrict some live-event gambling advertising, require affordability checks and make states seek federal approval before offering legal sports betting. The bill had not become law, while oversight has largely remained with the states since the Supreme Court overturned the federal sports-betting ban in 2018.
