Lose $1,800 in a single night of basketball betting and a reasonable person might expect a warning from their sportsbook. ProPublica reporter Jake Pearson received a VIP invitation the next morning instead. That detail anchors a first-person investigation into how DraftKings responds when a customer repeatedly exhibits behaviors that addiction specialists associate with problem gambling, and the answer, according to ProPublica, is that it responds with upgrades.
How DraftKings Escalated Rewards as Losses Climbed
The platform’s VIP program grew more generous as Pearson’s deposits and losses climbed, raising direct questions about what the loyalty structure is actually designed to reward.
Pearson deliberately replicated behaviors that addiction specialists identify as warning signs: loss chasing, rapidly increasing wager sizes, switching sports late at night, and heavy use of parlays and microbets. After roughly three weeks and $5,800 in deposits, DraftKings enrolled him in its formal VIP program, providing a personal representative, deposit matches, and bonus bets. By the end of the 10-week experiment, Pearson had deposited $21,600 and lost $10,702 net, according to ProPublica.
Long-odds wagers accelerated loyalty-credit accumulation within the VIP structure, meaning the program rewarded behavior that critics say is most likely to produce rapid, large losses. Lori Kalani, DraftKings’ chief responsible-gaming officer, told ProPublica that the company’s system worked as intended throughout the experiment. That claim deserves scrutiny against what the investigation actually documented.
What the Platform’s Safety Tools Actually Did
Responsible-gaming tools existed throughout Pearson’s experiment, but each one required him to act first, while the platform’s promotional engine kept running regardless.
Responsible-gaming prompts appeared after major deposits and extended sessions, but each required Pearson to choose whether to activate a limit or take a break. When he set a two-hour daily session limit and a $100 daily deposit cap, promotional alerts arrived approximately 30 minutes later. The platform’s marketing and its secretly tracking users‘ interests were operating in opposite directions at the same time.
DraftKings had developed a data-science tool specifically designed to identify customers approaching dangerous loss thresholds, according to ProPublica, but chose not to deploy it, defending its existing methodology instead. Its 51-person account-review team did not refer Pearson’s account for manual review. The account showed repeated large deposits, escalating wagers, loss chasing, and extended sessions.
Pearson also moved into the online casino, where DraftKings cross-promoted sports-themed products under a “Suggested For You” section after he placed sports bets. He played roughly 500 blackjack hands over one New Jersey weekend and lost nearly $3,000. Anthropologist and gambling-behavior researcher Natasha Schüll told ProPublica that rapid microbetting, in which results on individual pitches or possessions arrive within seconds, is structurally similar to slot-machine play.
By contrast, FanDuel displayed “Reality Check” reminders six times during one extended session in Pearson’s week-long test on that platform, reporting his time in the app and the amount wagered. FanDuel did not extend a VIP invitation under comparable conditions, according to ProPublica.
“It’s like an entire system that’s just built to appear to be doing something good while giving them basically like a free pass to do everything bad by saying, ‘Hey, we told you, you know, you have a responsibility, it’s your fault.’” Rob Minnick, recovering gambling addict and co-founder of a gambling-industry watchdog nonprofit
The Numbers Behind the Platform’s Growth Incentives
The personal stakes in Pearson’s investigation reflect a national pattern that regulators and researchers say is accelerating.
Since the Supreme Court’s 2018 decision that allowed states to choose whether to legalize sports betting, Americans have placed more than $600 billion in sports wagers, according to ProPublica. Gambling-disorder diagnoses rose from 3.0 to 4.8 per 100,000 people in states that legalized sports betting between 2018 and March 2026. Diagnoses declined in states without legalization, according to Epic Research data reported by NBC News.
A 2024 Connecticut study cited by ProPublica found that 1.8% of problem gamblers generated 51% of sports-betting revenue. Massachusetts data reported in the investigation found that only 0.64% of gamblers had betting limits reduced as of December 2024, and winning bettors were more likely than losing bettors to have their maximum wagers lowered. At a June investor conference, DraftKings CEO Jason Robins said, “I do think it’s a when, not if, that a lot of these states are going to legalize iGaming,” as reported by ProPublica.
The responsible-gaming tools on your betting app are, in Pearson’s documented experience on DraftKings, almost entirely opt-in. You have to find them, activate them, and maintain them while promotional alerts continue arriving. The central regulatory question this investigation puts on the table is whether that arrangement should continue, or whether platforms should carry a default obligation to stay safe before the losses define the relationship.
