Sportsbooks are fond of highlighting big parlay winsΒ on Twitter. And why shouldnβt they be fond of it? Itβs basically the best form of free advertising: βLook here, rubes! You too can win hundreds of thousands of dollars by placing insane longshot bets, never mind the fact we profit by like 30% on your silly parlay bets compared to about 6% on straight bets!β
Yep. Parlays are cash cows for the mobile sportsbooks, and the constant, daily barrage of showing us the βbig winnersβ is certainly an effective way to get us to try and do the same.
But late Sunday night, in its rush to highlight the latest big win, FanDuel got itself a little twisted up.
Itβs about the most improbable bet thatβs ever been won: Someone put $20 down β a $20 site credit, no less β Β on a parlay picking the correct, exact score of both the AFC and NFC Championship Games Sunday.
And when the Rams beat the 49ers 20-17 after the 7.5-point underdog Bengals beat the Chiefs 27-24 in overtime, that 28,950/1 parlay cashed to the tune of $579,020.
$20 β $579K π€―π€―π€―
There's π‘π’ πͺππ¬. There's just π‘π’ πͺππ¬.
The most ππ‘π¦ππ‘π parlay you'll ever see, guaranteed.
(via IG / jetthonig_) pic.twitter.com/PrkaYvD7vJ
— FanDuel Sportsbook (@FDSportsbook) January 31, 2022
Confirmed by FanDuel, the winning ticket was first posted on the Instagram page of jetthonig_ (which FanDuel retweeted above), a page that has since been more or less locked from public viewing by the owner of the page. But as of Monday at 2:00 p.m. ET, the profile included the following five-second Instagram story showing the eventual half-a-million-dollar winning ticket and the caption βTuff,β on a backdrop showing Bleacher Report and br_bettingβs tweet about the bonkers winner.
Gambling Twitter exploded with this legitimately insane winning ticket, and mainstream news media, including USA Today and the Sporting News, identified the winner of the bet as Jett Honig.
Minor issue
Only problem? Jett Honig appears to be a high school student, set to graduate in 2025. Records and rosters accessible through some lightΒ Google searching, Facebook queries, and all other Internet sleuthing led to the same conclusion: Jett Honig is a kid.
Of course, kids are not allowed to legally bet on football games.
This uncomfortable potential truth began circulating on Twitter. On the thread below, Crosscowboy10 was bragging about being friends with the eventual winner, and in the ensuing discussion, another user noted βLmao ur friend is underage and already got found out by Fan dual. He ainβt seeing any of that money.β
Thatβs my fucking friend pic.twitter.com/NfQcCbybEQ
— Crosscowboy10 (@Crosscowboy101) January 31, 2022
Additionally, a video purportedly showing Honig and his friends celebrating the victory was making its way through the digital grapevine.
Circumstantial evidence was certainly β¦ not great.
The following day, Sports HandleΒ exchanged a flurry of emails with Kevin Hennessy, FanDuelβs director of publicity.
He told us the winner was not underage, and that the person who posted on Instagram is not the account holder, that the bet slip is legitimate and that the company is reviewing the wager.Β
Pressed further with some incredulity, Hennessy said, βI think this is more about social media beware. I can confirm the bet was legit and was paid out to a customer in Connecticut.βΒ
Hennessy also said it is FanDuelβs policy to not release anything about their customers without their permission.
But by the end of the day, it certainly appeared the winning customer was comfortable releasing at least some information about himself.
βThe Instagram account is the son of the FanDuel customer that actually placed the bet and won,β Hennessy wrote. βThe IG account holder does not have a FD account and did not place the wager and any credit the IG account holder is taking can be chalked up to social media bluster and excitement from his father winning.β
So, congratulations, apparently, to the father on his massive NFL parlay win.
But really: FanDuelβs social media team should probably be a teensy bit more judicious when deciding to grab someoneβs Instagram post or tweet and then retweet it from the official account. It took us one single Google search to find βJett Honig.β This was not some Dark Web, deep search using websites that promise to βfind arrest records.β Google the name, and who β and how old β Jett Honig is (full disclosure: awesome name, kid) pops up like a piece of toast.
Of course, Honig β or any other kid β wouldnβt be able to get an account with a regulated sportsbook. He could try to lie about his birthdate, but the Social Security number would (hopefully/obviously) shut the process down.
But thereβs really zero policing the following scenario: βHey Dad, lemme use your FanDuel account!β
Kids are betting
βThis is huge. I canβt tell you how crazy this is. Itβs rampant,β said a semi-professional gambler who has two college-age children. βFrom what Iβve seen β and maybe itβs just my kidsβ circle β but so many kids I know are big sports bettors, and theyβre all looking for the big hit. Theyβre not interested in sides; theyβre trying to turn $10 into $10,000.β
He said he knows at least two dozen underage gamblers who use β with permission β accounts set up by their parents.Β
βHow do you police that? Itβs impossible,β he noted. βAnd most parents are naive and donβt realize the tax hit theyβre going to take if their kid actually wins.β
This gambler wonβt let his own kids use his accounts, but itβs not for any moral reason.
βMy kids guilt me all the time, give me the βall my friends are doing it,ββ he said. βBut Iβve got millions of dollars in and out of DraftKings, I donβt need my kid hitting a $100,000 parlay and opening me up to whatever algorithm DraftKings is going to hit me with.β
His points are actually β¦ well, spot on. While no one is sitting here wanting more underage kids to gamble, the policing of it in todayβs digital world falls firmly on the parentsβ shoulders, not the sportsbooks, if only because there is no way for FanDuel to actually know who is hitting βplace betβ short of β¦ what? Fingerprints? Facial recognition?Β
βAs a society, weβre pretty aloof with this stuff,β the semi-pro bettor said. βThereβs bigger things to worry about than a kid gambling on the Internet. We pick our spots.β
This reminded me of the Patriots-Eagles Super Bowl in 2018. Iβm sitting on the couch, building Showdown lineups on FanDuel, and my son β who was 8 years old at the time β was sitting next to me and saw Tom Bradyβs name. He was the only player he was aware of β and could easily read β so he said, βPlay him.β
I then spent 30 seconds explaining how to build a lineup, and scrolled through the names β and pictures β and let my son pick the remainder of the team.
It came in third.
In the end, is the above any different from what might have happened Sunday?
The answer is, βum, yeah, kinda seems like a lot different,β but it does demonstrate the policing factor. There is no way for FanDuel to know that my 8-year-old nearly took down a GPP. It was a great father-son bonding experience, even though I had to throw him $50 to spend as he wished. (No way I was splitting it evenly with him.)
And in Sundayβs scenario, thereβs really no way to know, or unequivocally prove, who placed the $20 bet. It was a crazy bet, it hit, the account holder is of age because the account holder has to be of age. What more is there to say, especially from FanDuel’s and the bettorβs point of view?
But there is one thing Iβm pretty certain of: I promise you FanDuel is going to do a little more vetting when it comes to hyping these big wins on social media. That Iβd bet on, and you donβt even have to give me +2895000 odds. Sportsbooks do not want any trouble about kids using their product, no matter how often it might actually be happening.
