FanDuel Hits Server Trouble at Critical Time

by
September 15, 2014

Daily fantasy sports site FanDuel, fresh off their recent cash influx, ran into a bit of a problem on Sunday. Mainly, a whole host of fantasy players were unable to access the web site or mobile app to enter new contests or update current rosters. About 30 minutes before the 1 pm ET kick-offs, an important window for fantasy as this is usually when teams announce active and inactive players, FanDuel began performing poorly, with slow load times and spotty page loads. Eventually, the site degraded to the point of unusability. With only a few minutes before some teams kicked off — at which point rosters would lock — this left many people high and dry with unentered contests, unwanted rosters, and even injured players destined to gain zero points.

There was, shall we say, a fair deal of unhappiness among fans. A simple search of Twitter can tell you as much. And some of it was, in fact, justified. Many of FanDuel’s games cost money to play, and they run high-stakes tournaments like the World Fantasy Football Championships. When so much is on the line, the ability to change a roster in the final minutes is a necessity.

At the time, FanDuel did not seem to be responding to concerns on Twitter, but did offer one concession about a half hour after the opening kickoffs.

This gave users about 30 minutes to request a refund, assuming said users even saw the singular tweet.

Fantasy sports is becoming an ever-growing business. But, as FanDuel found out, a bigger user base can create bigger problems down the road.





 

David G. Temple is the Managing Editor of TechGraphs and a contributor to FanGraphs, NotGraphs and The Hardball Times. He hosts the award-eligible podcast Stealing Home. Dayn Perry once called him a "Bible Made of Lasers." Follow him on Twitter @davidgtemple.

2 Comments
Oldest
Newest Most Voted
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments
Michael Sweeney
10 years ago

Can we really call FanDuel a “fantasy” site? It seems like their gimmick is running football gambling disguised as fantasy which simultaneously lets them avoid gambling bans and offer worse odds than traditional ATS football gambling. Good business plan (if they can get away with it) but it seems leagues away from “starting a fantasy league with my buddies.” Their “get rich quick” style TV ads just drive home this point.

I can’t say I’m an expert on their contests, but it certainly seems like there’s a strong incentive for malicious players to use DDoS attacks to improve their odds in these games, which I imagine is the culprit in this downtime.

0
Amused
10 years ago
Reply to  Michael Sweeney

You may be right about questionable marketing, and even weaknesses relating to DDoS attacks , but DFS sites are the hardly fly-by-night ventures as you seem to imply. On Week 1 or 2 of the NFL season, I don’t think it would be an unreasonable guess to think they saw 500K unique visitors to a site during a 15 minute window. Wouldn’t another, maybe more likely, solution be capacity issues with their servers?

Moreover, I’m curious as to why you regard these as operating in some questionable legal sphere. What is it about DFS that doesn’t fit into the 2006 law which defines what constitutes fantasy sports? That is, if you’re suggesting that they’re not compliant with the legal and current definition, I’m wondering how you reached that conclusion. It seems, at least to informed observers–Forbes, NPR, etc, that DFS sites have made sure that their product is fully compliant with the law.

Short of these being revealed as Ponzi-type schemes with mixed user and operating funds, I struggle to imagine a situation where DFS won’t continue to grow in popularity and use in the next 12 to 24 months. They might need to adapt to grow, sure, but to argue these are gimmicks without staying power seems to be a moralizing overreaction or a misunderstanding of the niche that they’re satisfying.

0