- William Hill sued FanDuel in 2018.
- The suit, filed in federal court, was settled in February.
- William Hill has now donated $50,000 of the settlement to Rutgers University – Newark.
ATLANTIC CITY, N.J. – Lawmakers have long feared that expanded sports betting would lead to integrity issues. And in the case of two major US sportsbook operators, that’s exactly what’s happened.
Except not in the way you might expect.
In January, bookmaker William Hill settled its lawsuit against FanDuel for copyright infringement, of all things.
This week, details of the suit – and its settlement – have been published by the Associated Press.
Per William Hill’s October 2018 suit, FanDuel circulated a nearly verbatim copy of the former’s betting guide. William Hill produced the guide in question for patrons of its Monmouth Park partner in Oceanport.
FanDuel runs New Jersey’s largest sportsbook, which operates out of The Meadowlands in East Rutherford. The Meadowlands is Monmouth Park’s largest competitor.
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FanDuel effectively plagiarized the William Hill document verbatim, with several paragraphs and illustrations cited in court as examples. USAOnlineSportsbooks.com finds it hilarious that the biggest mistake FanDuel made was failing to remove William Hill’s branding from the text it copied into its own guide.
The terms of the settlement have not been made public. However, on Monday, William Hill announced plans to donate $50,000 from that deal to Rutgers University - Newark’s creative writing program.
This bit of jockeying between competitors puts an appropriate spin on things, turning what could have been a bitter (if largely pointless) dispute into a good-natured ribbing.
If FanDuel wants to ape William Hill going forward, maybe their odds boards would be a good place to start. After all, who really wants to take the Giants to cover at -135?
Benjamin joined the USAOnlineSportsbooks team in 2017, but has been a published writer for years. What started out as a hobby with his own blog turned into a professional career. We can rely on Benjamin to know which horses to keep an eye on when it comes to horse betting, but he also has an in-depth knowledge of baseball and other popular categories as well.
