In the moments before Super Bowl 55 kicked off, both FanDuel and DraftKings experienced technical difficulties with their online sportsbooks that prevented customers from placing bets in some markets.
"Due to unprecedented demand, we are experiencing isolated service interruptions with our Sportsbook in certain markets," FanDuel said in a statement to The Action Network's Darren Rovell. "Our teams are working to remedy the problem as quickly as possible."
FanDuel acknowledged in a tweet that Michigan and Illinois were specific states experiencing problems. A message shown to users experiencing problems read "sorry, we're experiencing higher than expected demand in your state, please try again in 30 seconds."
Shortly after FanDuel's problems surfaced on social media, DraftKings experienced outages of its own.
"We are aware of the current issues with bet placement and viewing bet history," DK said in a tweet. "Our teams are actively working on fixing these issues right now.
"We are continuing to work to resolve customers having issues placing bets. We will provide an update once this is resolved."
That statement was released roughly 15 minutes prior to kickoff.
An updated statement from DraftKings was provided two possessions into the first quarter.
"The ongoing issue has been resolved in all states except Michigan," the tweet said. "Bet Placement and Bet History is now fully functional and we are continuing to work to get bet placement back in Michigan. Thank you for hanging with us!"
DraftKings later told Rovell in a statement: “We’re aware customers were unable to access our mobile and online Sportsbook. It appears this outage was caused by a surge in traffic that caused problems for our backend provider. Our DFS and pools products, supported by in-house technology, are functioning without issue. This incident is why we believe owning our own technology is important.”
