I was so consumed with The Bachelor premiere yesterday that I didn’t pay much attention when I saw a headline buzz across my phone talking about Bachelor alums Jade and Tanner being involved in gambling collusion for their $1 Million win on Draft Kings.
I’m not well versed in gambling, sports or collusion so this headline went over my head. But I did go ahead and do some research to figure out exactly what happened just so I could break it down for you guys.
Here’s the sitch…
Jade and Tanner are avid players in the DraftKings fantasy football league. But this past weekend, the couple made headlines when Jade won the Draft Kings Millionaire Maker where contestants assemble players in the four NFL first-round playoff games. From my understanding, there are 150 possible entries per person, each costing $20 which is a lot and would take quite a bit of time. Thing is, both Jade and Tanner submitted 150 teams, putting their total entries at 300 together.
People are saying that they used a computer system to configure the teams which is against Draft King’s rules. They state in part:
Team-building complementary lineups which serve to work together AND executing a strategy that may create any unfair advantage over individual play.
- Example A: You and 2 of your friends coordinate the makeup of the lineups you build AND coordinate which contests you enter using them.
- Example B: You and a group of friends collaborate in NFL contests to each draft different QBs and WRs, to guarantee you aren’t competing as directly with each other.
The Internet has come to the conclusion that this collusion is real since the quarterbacks in the entries hardly overlap at all:
Draft Kings congratulated Jade on Twitter and later took it down. But we all know that once it’s out there, someone in the Interwebs has the screenshot and it will be around forever. It said:
Tanner has since come to the defense of his wife saying in an ESPN phone interview Monday saying, “We each put in our separate players, in our separate accounts and rooted for own players. No one has ever said a peep about us when we lost for 17 straight weeks. Then, of course, somehow Jade picked the right lineup, got the million and the spotlight got shown on it. And people, especially since she’s a woman, assume that I do it all for her. If I had won, I bet no one would’ve raised a flag.”
“I thought Drew Brees and Carson Wentz would have big days,” Tolbert went on. “Obviously, I was wrong. But Jade definitely wanted to go with the other quarterbacks. I think partly she likes rooting against me.”
Draft Kings is now started an investigation into whether or not the Bachelor alums are guilty of collusion.
Draft Kings released a statement that said in part, “
“We take the integrity and fairness of our contests very seriously and are looking into this matter,” the company said in a statement released Monday morning.AD
“I understand everyone wants answers and we are trying to work quickly, but I personally just learned about this within the past hour or two,” DraftKings CEO Jason Robins said in a reply to a tweet on Monday afternoon.
“We respect that Draft Kings feels they must do their due diligence in regard to Jade winning their $1 million dollar prize for the fantasy contest for the NFL’s wild-card round this weekend. Though we must ponder, would the questions, accusations, and curiosity about this win be the same if the winner had been male and someone who wasn’t already in the public eye?” the couple said in a statement to TMZ. “It is incredibly important for us to establish that Jade’s win is nothing more than pure luck and we are confident that Draft Kings will determine the same.”
What do you guys think? Did the Bachelor alums get themselves into a sticky situation or are the innocent and now rightful millionaires?