- A unanimous Massachusetts Gaming Commission vote Nov. 5 sends FanDuel to an adjudicatory hearing on alleged proxy wagering.
- An acquaintance inside Massachusetts put $21,800 across 22 August bets on Bill Simmons’ account, FanDuel reported.
- Massachusetts law directs sportsbooks to prohibit proxy wagering and makes no exception for a shared login code.
- Commissioner Eileen O’Brien called it the first proxy betting matter openly referred to the commission, and staff have not ruled out action against Simmons or the acquaintance.
BOSTON – FanDuel is headed to an adjudicatory hearing before the Massachusetts Gaming Commission over alleged proxy betting after commissioners voted unanimously Thursday to call one. The bets at issue, 22 of them worth $21,800 in August, ran through the account of podcaster Bill Simmons and were placed by an acquaintance inside Massachusetts, according to a commission memo.
What The Bureau Presented
Senior enforcement counsel Zachary Mercer of the commission’s Investigations and Enforcement Bureau walked commissioners through the case at the Nov. 5 meeting, where the agenda listed it for a discussion of next steps. The licensee is identified there as BetFair Interactive US, LLC, doing business as FanDuel Sportsbook, which holds a Category 3 license in Massachusetts sports betting.
The matter, docketed as 2026-SWN-321, turns on G.L. c. 23N, § 11(a) and 205 CMR 248.17, the two provisions the agenda cites. The handle came to $21,800 across 22 wagers, which FanDuel reported were placed on Aug. 5, 7 and 19, according to the bureau’s Oct. 26 memo to commissioners.
The case began with Simmons’ own words on his Aug. 30 podcast, where he described having the acquaintance bet from his FanDuel account, the memo says. FanDuel flagged the case to the commission and canceled the wagers, the operator said in a statement to NBC News.
Simmons lives in California, which has no legal sports betting, and he said the login code arrived on his phone and he handed it to the acquaintance, NBC News reported. In a later episode, Simmons said he had not known proxy betting was prohibited, the outlet reported.
What The Rule Says
The statute puts the duty on the sportsbook. Section 11(a)(iv) of G.L. c. 23N directs an operator to employ commercially reasonable methods to “prohibit persons from placing wagers as agents or proxies for others,” and 205 CMR 238.32(4) says the operator shall prevent it. The duty runs to the licensee, which is why the hearing is FanDuel’s even though the bets ran through Simmons’ account.
The clause turns on who places the wager and for whom, not on how that person got into the account. Under 205 CMR 248.07(1), a password or other secure credential exists so that only the patron has access to the account. Under 205 CMR 248.01(2), an account in Massachusetts legal sports betting may only be established in a patron’s name and is not transferable.
The verification code let the acquaintance into the account, but it did not change who was placing the wagers, and nothing in the clause exempts an account holder who supplies it.
What Commissioners Want From The Hearing
The vote follows the Nov. 4 preview of Massachusetts sportsbook enforcement matters, which listed the FanDuel briefing. The Nov. 3 agenda left the account holder unnamed; the memo in the meeting materials supplies the name.
“The IEB hasn’t foreclosed any kind of condition here going forward,” Mercer told commissioners. When Commissioner Paul Brodeur asked whether action remained possible against Simmons or the acquaintance, Mercer said the bureau would be “making determinations as the facts guide us.”
“I’m more interested in how the operator let something like this happen and the actions they took after it was public,” Chair Jordan Maynard said.
O’Brien asked that the case come back before the commission, calling it “the first one we’ve had openly referred to us.” Proxy betting is one of the commission’s bigger worries, “especially with youth and college age people betting,” she said, adding that she has been “a little disturbed by the lack of full appreciation” that it is illegal. The hearing, she said, is “an opportunity to have an operator do a deeper dive as well into proxy betting.”
