Two former “Bachelor in Paradise” darlings, Jade Roper Tolbert and Tanner Tolbert, are blaming their celebrity status and sexism for scrutiny from DraftKings over their $1 million “Millionaire Maker” win during the NFL’s wild-card weekend.
“Would the questions, accusations and curiosity about this win be the same if the winner had been male and someone who wasn’t already in the public eye?” as the daily fantasy site investigates the accusations.
“We each put in our separate players, in our separate accounts and rooted for own players. No one has ever said a peep about us when we lost for 17 straight weeks. Somehow Jade picked the right lineup, got the million and the spotlight got shown on it. And people, especially since she’s a woman, assume that I do it all for her. If I had won, I bet no one would’ve raised a flag.”
“We take the integrity and fairness of our contests very seriously and are looking into this matter,” DraftKings said in a statement Monday.
Jade Roper was a contestant on Season 19 of “The Bachelor,” and Tanner Tolbert was a contestant on Season 11 of “The Bachelorette.” The two met in 2016 during Season 2 of the spin-off series “Bachelor in Paradise” and currently reside in California, where they work as social media influencers. They say they have even received death threats as a result of the uproar.
“Crazy stuff,” Tanner said. “It’s sad. Honestly, it’s taken a lot of the fun out of it.”
Tanner is a known, high-volume daily fantasy sports player. , he was asked recently, “What do you do that most annoys your wife?” Tanner replied, “Fantasy football stuff.”
He claims that Jade’s past disdain for fantasy sports has become an obsession over the past season.
“She hated sports for the longest time,” Tanner said. “She decided to get into it this year, and it’s actually made her more of a sports fan. She never really cared about the games until she had a rooting interest.”
Controversy mounted shortly after Jade’s win Sunday night when it was uncovered that both Tolberts had submitted the maximum number of entries into the contest and 298 of their collective 300 lineups were unique. The evidence suggests that the two worked in concert to create mutually exclusive lineups to increase their coverage in the tournament.
Daily fantasy sports player William Bierman broke down the overlap in . The clearest pattern was within the quarterback position: Over 95 percent of Jade’s lineups featured AFC quarterbacks (Josh Allen, Ryan Tannehill and Deshaun Watson, who played on Saturday) while almost 99 percent of Tanner’s lineups utilized NFC quarterbacks (Drew Brees, Russell Wilson and Carson Wentz, who played on Sunday).
“I thought Drew Brees and Carson Wentz would have big days,” Tanner said. “Obviously, I was wrong. But Jade definitely wanted to go with the other quarterbacks. I think partly she likes rooting against me.”
The Tolberts’ alleged actions are violations of DraftKings’ terms of acceptable behavior, as noted on their :
“Group play behavior designed to gain an unfair advantage over others” such as “Team-building complementary lineups which serve to work together AND executing a strategy that may create any unfair advantage over individual play” or “Entering the maximum number of entries in a contest, type of contest, or event, and having a 3rd party, regardless of their relationship, put in additional entries for you.”
If they are deemed guilty of these accusations, DraftKings has the right to “suspend or terminate” all accounts and “withhold or revoke the awarding of prizes.”
Group play and collusion are not new issues for the DFS community. Edward Fear, a director at Global Daily Fantasy Sports Inc., called the problem “endemic” and “something that happens in every significant contest by lots of people.”
The Tolberts, while maintaining their innocence, respect the company’s obligation to investigate their win.
“We respect that DraftKings feels they need to do their due diligence in regard to Jade winning their $1 million dollar prize for the fantasy contest for the NFL’s wild-card round this weekend,” Tanner said. “It is incredibly important for us to establish that Jade’s win is nothing more than pure luck and we are confident that DraftKings will determine the same.”
DraftKings Inc. at the end of 2019 via a three-company merger with special purpose acquisition company Diamond Ea💜gle Acquisition Corp. and gambling technology company SBTech. The company will forgo the traditional IPO process and trade on the Nasdaq with a new ticker symbol and an estimated $3.3 billion in market capital. The transaction is expected 𒆙to close in the first half of 2020.
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