The fall equinox arrived on Tuesday. In the United States, fall means football. And football means millions of starry-eyed gamblers dreaming of big winnings.
Most, of course, will lose. Others will lose big. Sadly, some of those biggest losers will come from the ranks of the desperately addicted.
According to an investigation by The New York Times, the gambling behemoth DraftKings has employed a form of artificial intelligence to identify and solicit customers most likely to gamble and lose.
At the same time, the company has resisted proposals to employ similar technology to identify potential problem gamblers.
So said multiple former DraftKings employees.
In fact, The New York Times based its investigation on interviews with more than 40 such former employees, along with “internal research memos, presentations and Slack messages as well as betting records from experiments conducted on customers.”
On the whole, those former employees described a company obsessed with profit while less enthusiastic about helping desperate gambling addicts.
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“We are looking for traits and features that we can target that indicate a good investment,” former DraftKings data analyst Jayden Butts said of a machine-learning model that sought to identify potential gamblers who would wager and lose in response to certain company promotions.
Butts and other former employees shared their experiences — and regrets — with The New York Times.
“It is as predatory as it sounds,” another former analyst said, requesting anonymity. “If you lose more, we give you more, so you keep playing more.”
DraftKings will “give” customers “more” in the form of free bets, deposit bonuses, and a “profit boost.” This, according to former company data analyst Jacob Shulkin, works wonders.
“I feel I’m getting free money,” Shulkin said, echoing the gambler’s thoughts, “but really it’s dragging me back in.”
Meanwhile, two other former analysts who worked on similar promotional models said that they feared the models would target the most vulnerable gamblers. Each analyst requested guardrails. Each time, they said, the company told them that another division would handle the problem.
That division, the Responsible Gaming Center, is headed by Lori Kalani.
Kalani said in an interview that DraftKings relies on “customers who are betting within their means, are betting for entertainment and betting for fun.”
She also said that the company does monitor for “potentially risky behaviors,” though she claimed that risk prediction technology lacked evidence for its effectiveness.
Likewise, in a statement, DraftKings refuted its former employees’ characterizations.
The company “rejects any implication that its marketing practices are unfair or improperly targets customers,” the statement read.
Moreover, DraftKings insisted that it directed its promotions “toward customers who demonstrate sustained, engaged use of our platform, not toward customers based on their losses.”
On the whole, The New York Times’ interviewees painted a picture of a company where two tactics dominate.
First, DraftKings allegedly uses predictive technology to target prospective gamblers, but not to help the desperate ones in need.
Second, DraftKings allegedly directs its promotions toward gamblers most likely to lose.
Kalani admitted that the company’s Responsible Gaming Center has opted against the use of predictive technology. But she cited that technology’s dubious effectiveness rather than a lack of desire to help problem gamblers.
As for the second claim, there is no doubt that company profits depend on gamblers who lose. Some of those losses are built into the nature of gambling.
Others, however, come from pure desperation. After all, gamblers who bucked long odds with big wagers helped build the Las Vegas strip. Now, those same gamblers have helped line the pockets of executives at companies like DraftKings.
Of course, we conservatives often find ourselves torn between the love of freedom and the love of virtue. Freedom provides the ability to fulfill our duties to God and others, but it can also lead to indulgence in unhealthy appetites that morph into vices.
In the case of gambling, as with other forms of amusement prone to abuse, primary responsibility rests with the individual. But it does not end there. Bartenders, after all, cannot serve the intoxicated.
Thus, as long as gambling remains legal, companies like DraftKings have a moral obligation to prioritize not profits, but protections for the desperately addicted.
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