FanDuel and DraftKings have asked a Philadelphia judge to dismiss the lawsuit. The case centres on Terry Thompson and Christopher Sage, two Pennsylvania men who say the apps left them in deep financial trouble.
On March 24, the Public Health Advocacy Institute filed the product-liability case on behalf of Thompson and Sage against DraftKings, FanDuel, Genius Sports and the NFL. The group said the defendants developed and profited from an unreasonably dangerous product designed to maximize betting behaviour that leads to addiction, and accused them of using artificial intelligence, machine learning and live in-game microbets to keep bettors engaged.
The complaint says each man was assigned a personal VIP host who communicated by mobile phone and enticed them with promotional offers, trips to sporting events and other gifts. It also says personal contact and enticements allegedly continued after at least one plaintiff indicated he no longer wanted to participate in online betting on DraftKings. The suit brings claims under the Pennsylvania Unfair Trade Practices and Consumer Protection Law, along with allegations of design defects, failure to warn, negligence and intentional infliction of emotional distress.
On July 15, attorneys filed preliminary objections in Common Pleas Court in Philadelphia. FanDuel and DraftKings argue Pennsylvania law imposes no general duty on gambling operators to stop adults from making lawful wagers, and FanDuel says the dispute belongs in arbitration under its terms and conditions. They also suggested the court could pause the case while the Pennsylvania Gaming Control Board examines regulatory questions such as in-game microbets, and a board spokesman later said the records had not yet been reviewed.
The case drew wider attention after a July 9 report said FanDuel VIP manager Bryttanni Morgan sent Thompson a personalized Bryce Harper video in November 2024. Harper later said on Instagram that he had recorded the Cameo message without knowing FanDuel would use it as a reward for a VIP gambler with an addiction, and said on July 13 that he had not consented to that use.
According to the lawsuit, Thompson first bet with FanDuel in 2020 and lost nearly $1.8 million. The complaint says he planned to die by suicide earlier this year rather than tell his family how much he had lost.
Sage began wagering with DraftKings in 2019 and lost about $175,000, the complaint says. It also says he stopped making mortgage and truck payments and borrowed from loan sharks to keep gambling.
The NFL and Genius Sports are also named. PHAI says Genius Sports licenses official game and player data to sportsbooks and that the NFL was among its largest shareholders, while the league argued the court had no jurisdiction because it had no relevant contact with the plaintiffs.
PHAI cast the dispute as part of a much larger market. The group said sports-related gambling rose from $430 million in 2018 to $16.96 billion in 2025, and that Pennsylvania sportsbooks generated nearly $775 million in revenue on more than $8.7 billion in wagers from July 2024 through June 2025, with $8.2 billion online. A systematic review in Frontiers in Psychiatry found that digital gambling marketing often targets vulnerable gamblers and sports audiences through social media, news feeds and official pages.
