The Iowa Racing and Gaming Commission has issued a $5,000 penalty to sports betting giants, DraftKings, for failing to update its self-exclusion rules. According to the authorities, DraftKings did not revise its self-exclusion list to bring it in line with the Commission’s list which was updated on December 26th, 2019. Commission rules stipulate that an Iowan sports betting license holder has a week to sync its self-exclusion rule with that of the authority’s. However, even after the January 3rd deadline, DraftKings had not revised its lists, and it was for this that the operator was penalized.
DraftKings noted that this was in fact the situation and agree to pay the Commission the $5,000 fine.
“DraftKings agreed to a stipulated agreement in the amount of five to 20-thousand dollars,” said the administrator of the IRGC, Brian Ohorilko. “The Commission reviewed the facts and set the penalty at $5,000.”
This is not the first time that DraftKings has butted heads with the IRGC. In the past, the operator was also reprimanded by the authority for breaching self-exclusion rules via its fantasy sports business in Iowa. However, it was not considered a violation and the group was not fined.
Two Iowan Casinos Fined
The IRGC fined Rhythm City Casino in Davenport for a violation which involved surveillance cameras, particularly a complete loss of coverage of critical areas in the facility on January 1st, 2019. The second violation occured again in February, where, according to Ohorilko, “there was the intermittent loss of critical areas for approximately four-and-a-half-hours.”
“In that particular situation, the commission and DCI were not notified,” he said, adding that for this, the casino was fined $7,500.
The Diamond Jo Casino in Worth Country was also fined $7,500 over surveillance camera issues. The authority said that a series of updates to the camera was supposed to take place but did not. It took into account the fact that the casino needed to spend $750,000 on the upgrades, and therefore the fine was less than the $10,000 that the casino was initially required to pay.
