DraftKings paid a $200,000 civil penalty after the SEC found that its PR firm posted unreleased business information on the CEO's personal X and LinkedIn accounts on July 27, 2023, and the company did not disclose it publicly for seven days. The SEC's September 26, 2024 order shows that an issuer answers for what its PR firm posts, and that deleting the posts does not cure a Regulation FD problem.
EPR Editorial Team. Edited on Oct 10, 2026.
What happened in the DraftKings Regulation FD case?
DraftKings' outside public relations firm, with authorization, posted on the CEO's personal X and LinkedIn accounts on July 27, 2023. The post said the company was "still seeing really strong growth in existing states." It appeared about a week before DraftKings' planned Q2 2023 earnings release, and neither account had been designated as a channel for investor disclosure.
DraftKings' communications team spotted the issue within about half an hour and asked the PR firm to remove the posts, according to BCLP's summary of the order. Removal was not enough. Regulation FD required DraftKings to disclose the information promptly to all investors, and the company did not do so until its earnings release seven days later.
DraftKings agreed to a $200,000 civil penalty, a cease-and-desist order and Regulation FD training for employees with corporate communications responsibilities, without admitting or denying the findings. Covington's analysis of the order notes that the PR firm was apparently authorized to post for the CEO, and the SEC still treated the disclosure as the company's responsibility.
What should public gaming operators change?
Public gaming operators should change four things in the order an in-house communications lead can run them.
Designate disclosure channels. The SEC's 2013 social media guidance says investors must be told in advance which outlets will carry key information. File the designation publicly and update it when accounts change hands.
Install pre-clearance workflows. Block posts during quiet periods with no one-off carve-outs, and route every executive-account post through legal and investor relations.
Extend Reg FD obligations to every agency. Put the same disclosure obligations the issuer carries into each PR firm and agency-of-record contract.
Run quarterly tabletop exercises. Test the workflow with named scenarios and recorded outcomes, because an internal drill that finds the gap costs less than an SEC action that finds it.
What does gambling marketing spend show about credibility?
U.S. gambling marketing spend runs at $3.9 billion, according to that analysis. The mix it reports is 36% television, 13% celebrity, 2.3% earned media and 1.5% responsible gambling, which works out to $520 million for celebrity against $60 million for responsible gambling. That ratio shows up in ESG research on publicly traded operators, and it frames why disclosure discipline and credibility investment belong in the same budget conversation.
The DraftKings order matters for every public operator because the same workflow risk exists wherever an external PR firm has social-posting authority. Operators including Flutter, BetMGM, Caesars Digital, Penn Entertainment, Rush Street Interactive, Bally's and Hard Rock Digital work with outside PR firms inside the same Regulation FD environment. The penalty was small, and the larger cost is the disclosure miss itself, since a seven-day gap between a selective post and public disclosure is the fact pattern regulators and plaintiffs cite.
Operationalize the four changes above before the next earnings cycle.
Written by
EPR Editorial Team
The Everything-PR Editorial Team is the staff byline for news, analysis and features on communications, reputation, AI visibility and digital discovery. Everything-PR has published since 2009. AI tools assist with research and drafting, and every article is reviewed by a human editor before publication. Coverage follows the Editorial Policy, and substantive corrections are noted on the article under the Corrections Policy.
