Major online betting platforms and the National Football League (NFL) are facing a product liability lawsuit in Pennsylvania alleging that their live in-game microbetting product is an “inherently dangerous product designed to maximize betting behavior that leads to addiction.”
The Public Health Advocacy Institute (PHAI) filed the suit on behalf of two Pennsylvania residents against DraftKings, FanDuel and Genius Sports Ltd. and the National Football League (NFL), one of the largest shareholders in Genius Sports, which supplies data from professional sports leagues needed to support online sports gambling.
The complaint filed in a Philadelphia court alleges that the platforms use technology including artificial intelligence to “supercharge” betting and create “addicted gamblers and encourage them to make more of the microbets.” While DraftKings and FanDuel provide the platform and incentives, Genius Sports and the NFL supply the data needed and they all profit from a “coordinated effort to convert ordinary sports fans into non-stop gamblers,” the plaintiffs contend.
The plaintiffs are suing under the Pennsylvania Unfair Trade Practices and Consumer Protection Law, as well as for design defects, a failure to warn the public as to the unreasonably dangerous nature of the products, negligence, intentional infliction of emotional distress, and other legal theories.
The companies have not yet responded to the litigation.
The plaintiffs, Christopher Sage and Terry Thompson, both signed up to bet through the DraftKings and FanDuel sportsbook apps. The complaint alleges that the defendants lured them into making more and more microbets on the DraftKings and FanDuel platforms by sending constant “push” notifications that promoted microbets.
The suit says DraftKings and FanDuel also assigned each man a personal “VIP Host” who communicated with them personally on their mobile phones and enticed them with promotional offers, trips to sporting events, and other gifts. On one occasion, his VIP host sent Thompson a $500 bottle of champagne.
“By coordinating their use of immersive marketing, AI, cloud computing, and algorithms customized for every customer, they hijack customers’ brains and cause catastrophic harm to lifelong fans like Mr. Sage and Mr. Thompson,” commented Mark Gottlieb, executive director at PHAI.
Within just a few years of placing their first microbets, the plaintiffs nearly lost all their money, houses, business, families, and, in Thompson’s case, nearly his life, the lawsuit claims.
According to the complaint, Sage developed and continued to suffer from a severe gambling addiction, resulting in gambling losses of more than $40,000 on DraftKings and more than $130,300 on FanDuel, while Thompson suffered gambling losses of approximately $1,520,000 on FanDuel and approximately $336,000 on DraftKings.
Their exposure also caused them both to suffer physical and emotional harms such as acute anxiety, depression, insomnia, and irritability. Thompson contemplated suicide before voluntarily placing himself into a psychiatric facility.
As explained in the complaint, microbetting enables sports gamblers to continuously make new wagers on the outcome of a game, and any portion of a game, as the game unfolds and as the odds for such wagers continue to change based on real-time developments.
In addition, microbetting enables customers to continuously make new proposition bets, or “prop” bets. For example, a prop bet on an NFL football game may be on what the score of a game will be at half-time, what the largest lead of the game will be, or how many third-downs both teams will successfully convert during a game. A live in-game prop bet might involve betting on whether the next play in the game will be a passing or running play, or whether the outcome of the next play will be yards gained, yards lost, an incompletion, a touchdown, or a turnover.
PHAI is a public health advocacy organization affiliated with Northeastern University in Boston. The institute focuses on legal actions involving tobacco companies, predatory gambling, and foods causing obesity.
The complaint notes that sports-related gambling has exploded, from $430 million in 2018 to a record $16.96 billion in 2025. In Pennsylvania, from July 2024 through June 2025, sportsbooks generated nearly $775 million in revenue based on over $8.7 billion in wagers, of which $8.2 billion in wagers were made online, according to PHAI.
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