When an injury doesn’t hurt
Emeka Egbuka has looked every bit the top-20 NFL draft pick that the Tampa Bay Buccaneers made him this past summer. The rookie wide receiver is fourth in the league in receiving yards and is a big reason why his team is 5-1 and sitting atop the NFC.
But when he went down with a hamstring injury in the first half of Sunday’s game against the San Francisco 49ers, people who wagered on prop bets that hinged on his production felt a pit in their stomachs (as did his teammates, coaches, and fans, of course). Fortunately for some, they placed their bets on sites that had policies to guard against injuries early in games and ended up not feeling the financial sting.
According to DraftKings, it refunded almost $10 million in cash credits to its customers as part of its Early Exit program. Fanatics Sportsbook paid back $1.5 million via its Fair Play policy.
Guarding against bad luck
It has long been a sticking point among bettors when they lost a prop bet, not because the player they put their money on underperformed, but because of simple injury bad luck. Sportsbooks have, at times, refunded wagers in these cases, especially if the player was hurt very early on or very late when they were on the verge of hitting prop bet targets, but it wasn’t until 2024 that sportsbooks began making it policy.
Fanatics introduced Fair Play before the 2024 NFL season, while DraftKings just launched the Early Exit program before the current NFL season. DraftKings’ program refunds pre-match and full-game player prop bets if the athlete leaves the game due to injury in the first quarter.
Fanatics’ Fair Play program was similar, but on September 8, the company announced that it was expanding the policy, applying it to injuries during the entire first half of games. After Week 1, when it refunded a total of $1.5 million to those who bet on Kansas City Chiefs wide receiver Xavier Worthy, the sportsbook says it has “saved more than 500,000 bets for Fanatics Sportsbook users.”
One bet from this weekend that Fanatics highlighted was a $1,000, six-leg parlay that counted on Egbuka scoring a touchdown. Because Egbuka got hurt before he could score, the parlay was doomed, But Fanatics’ Fair Play program canceled that leg of the parlay, reducing it to a five-leg wager. The customer hit all five of the remaining portions, winning $27,894.
Fanatics has said that 20% of its customers chose the sportsbook because of the Fair Play program. It’s good business for Fanatics and DraftKings – because they are simply refunding wagers, rather than paying out winnings on losing bets, they are attracting customers at what is likely minimal cost.
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