High-stakes fantasy football is on the chopping block after an employee changed a contestant’s lineup featuring a six-figure first-prize, ESPN reported Thursday.
The National Fantasy Football Championship, a high-stakes fantasy football platform that hosts massive contests for some of the biggest payouts in the industry, had an employee change a lineup to put in a player who had already scored a touchdown.
“Recently, with help from reporting by a public source, we successfully revealed a post-deadline move in one of our NFFC Post-Season Hold ‘Em contests that was detected and quickly confirmed, resulting in SportsHub being able to take immediate action to resolve the issue without any impact to the results of the contest,” NFFC founder Greg Ambrosius wrote to ESPN.
The report filed to ESPN shows that there were two changes to lineups made, one in the wild-card round and the other in the divisional round
In the wild-card round, running back Raheem Mostert (4.3 fantasy points in 0.5 PPR scoring) was subbed out for Aaron Jones (32.1 points).
In the divisional round, Travis Kelce was subbed in for Rashee Rice just after Kelce’s first-half touchdown score against the Dolphins.
“As a result of its internal investigation, an employee was terminated, and a contest participant has been banned from further play on our platforms,” Ambrosius told ESPN.
SportsHub – NFFC’s parent company – said that every transaction is timestamped for players to see and maintain the integrity of games.
The contestant was also disqualified from the tournament.
While the ugly situation is a black eye for the industry, the contest, which garnered 1,521 entries, will continue with the winner snagging $150,000 for first prize.
“I think this is incredibly damaging [to the fantasy industry],” Pete Overzet, 36, an experienced fantasy football player who helped find the issue, told ESPN.
“We’re in an era where people want to jump to conspiracy theories. Now, not only do you know that It can occur, but it did occur, I think that’s going to spread the seeds of distrust.”
Due to pending legal matters, the identity of the terminated employee has not been identified.