DraftKings customers crashed the site after receiving a mistake e-mail about a golf bet they never made. [Image: Shutterstock.com]
Because of a simple e-mail, it appears that DraftKings may have crashed its own site. On the night of August 13, DraftKings blasted an e-mail out to a significant portion of its customer base, informing them why a “dead heat reduction” was applied to a golf bet. The problem: most of those customers didn’t place the bet in question. Many, like this writer, have only used DraftKings for daily fantasy sports, not sports betting.
because so many people tried to hit the site at once, they crashed the system
Seeing a very strange e-mail about a golf bet they never made, many customers thought their accounts had been hacked and rushed to the DraftKings website and app to log in. That created a second problem: because so many people tried to hit the site at once, they crashed the system and could not access their accounts. This caused further fears about hacks. While an oversimplification, DraftKings effectively caused a DDoS attack on itself.
While DraftKings has not confirmed that the e-mail mistake and the subsequent panic rush to the site is what caused the crash, it is very likely the case. Customers received the e-mail in the 10pm ET hour and, according to DownDetector.com, reported DraftKings outages began just after 10pm, spiking at 10:42pm. By about midnight, reports were back to what they were before the e-mail.
It has been a banner week for DraftKings. In addition to the e-mail screw-up, the company walked back its proposed surcharge in high tax states after heavy backlash from customers.
