American singer, Bruce Springsteen once said; "When it comes to luck, you make your own." 86 gamblers based in New Jersey, USA can relate very well to this quote.
On May 13, 2021, two of England's biggest football rivals Manchester United and Liverpool were involved in a Premier League game.
Little did the 86 sports enthusiasts know, that was going to be their lucky day. Two betting companies Kambi Group and Rush Street Interactive had offered a so-called proposition or “prop” bet on whether Manchester United’s Marcus Rashford would score a goal.
A fatal flow occurred on the day when a Kambi trader located in England mistakenly entered a start date of May 14 for the game.
This mistake enabled people to place bets on the game after it had ended when it was known that Rashford had already scored.
A total of 86 people from New Jersey made such a bet, winning a collective total of nearly Sh13 million ($15,000).
The mishap was revealed in documents made public earlier this month by the New Jersey Division of Gaming Enforcement (NJDGE).
The enforcement agency has since fined the Malta-based sports betting technology company Kambi Group and Chicago-based Rush Street Interactive Sh113,000 ($1,000) apiece.
Sadly, the 86 New Jersey gamblers who thought they were beating the system had their bets on the match voided, and the two betting companies involved got fined.
Rush Street said it reported the mishap to New Jersey officials. “We and our partners take compliance seriously, and after the partner informed us that one of their millions of betting markets was left open after the European soccer game concluded."
Kambi has since implemented mandatory additional quality assurance retraining for its trading team members, and that team is now required to obtain secondary approval from supervisors for all manual entries on its sports data feed, according to regulators.