The Sports Betting Alliance (SBA) was fined $48,000 by the Maryland State Board of Elections on Tuesday. The fine is the largest ever levied by the board, and it comes due to the SBA violating the state’s 48-hour disclosure requirement.
The SBA, a group composed of sportsbook operators BetMGM, DraftKings, Fanatics Sportsbook, and FanDuel, spent money during the 2020 campaign cycle, when Maryland voters approved legal sports betting in the state, but failed to quickly report that spending. The SBA provided funding to certain candidates during the election cycle, and those donations were properly disclosed via candidate committee reports, but it missed a double-filing requirement wherein it was also supposed to detail those expenditures for the Board of Elections.
The SBA’s fine for the failure to report expenditures within 48 hours resulted in a $1,000 fine per day. All four of the sports betting operators included in the SBA are currently licensed in Maryland.
The error was caused by a compliance mistake, SBA spokesperson Nathan Click told.
