On July 30th at 10:33 AM ET, Draftkings announced via their discord channel that the Reignmakers game and NFT Marketplace were being shuttered effective immediately. An announcement on the Draftkings' website followed a few minutes later.

The game contests and all marketplace activity was simply gone with no notice whatsoever. This left panicked players scrambling for information, completely cut off from the ability to manage their portfolios or liquidate their digital assets.

It has now become painfully obvious that not only were the compensation offers mentioned in the statement inadequate in general, but that Draftkings completely ignored actual market valuations for the player cards they evaluated.

In the days that followed, more information emerged about how Draftkings intended to handle the removal of their NFT marketplace and the potential compensation (“Reignmakers Conclusion Payments”) for the customers they had wronged.

Almost no one was pleased with the results.

“Draftkings clearly did not fulfill their obligations to their customers based on the product details they advertised.” one concerned Draftkings user commented.

Still not really clear on what the big deal is?
See our article: Can you Explain it to me like I'm 5?

Roughly 72 hours after the marketplace was cut off for users, Draftkings sent collectible owners notice of what they are calling “Conclusion Payments”.

These “take it or leave it” offers purport to be compensation for the loss of liquidity and utility for all Draftkings Reignmakers NFTs.

However, upon closer analysis, it becomes clear that Draftkings put someone in charge of the compensation that either:

A. Clearly did not understand the promises they had made to players

or

B. Was simply out to pay players the minimum amount they thought they could get away with, without triggering a massive wave of lawsuits.

Players appear to have until October 31st of this year to accept their payments.

No one knows.

The breakdown presented to users, categorizing their payment, purports to make owners whole by dividing the remaining guaranteed cash prizing between players based on their holdings.

It appears Draftkings did take into account the rarity tier of collectibles held. However, we do not believe they gave any weight to many of the other very significant factors that created value for highly coveted NFTs.

They also failed completely to account for any of the non-cash prizing that was guaranteed to players over the remaining expected utility for collectibles in future seasons.

Draftkings has repeatedly refused both to discuss the calculation metrics, or any mistakes or omissions, with even some of their most valued customers.

We are working to reverse engineer the calculations to give a firmer understanding of exactly how Draftkings valued individual NFTs. If you’d like to contribute a copy of your CSV breakdown, along with your DK user handle click here.

Whether they did so intentionally or not, Draftkings made a number of mistakes with regard to the methods they used to calculated both the overall settlement amount necessary to fully make players whole, as well as the formula for how the money should be allocated between collectibles.

First and foremost, Draftkings shorted their customers millions of dollars by failing to include ANY non-cash prizing in their calculations.

Additionally:

• Draftkings appears to have failed to properly evaluate the quality of the collectibles held by their customers (i.e. in demand players, premium serial numbers, rarity in quantity minted, etc.)
• Draftkings failed to offer any type of a make good for the distress and inconveniences caused by the sudden discontinuation of the Reignmakers game and Marketplace; a precedent they had very clearly set after PA and CT excluded players from Reignmakers gameplay back in 2022.
• Draftkings failed to communicate with customers in a meaningful way, many of whom have invested thousands of hours and tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars into Reignmakers and the DK Marketplace.

There were also numerous examples of incompetence, short-sightedness, and sometimes downright deception exhibited by Draftkings during the 2+ years they operated their Marketplace and sold Reignmakers NFTs. We are working to compile a full list of these shortfalls here.

If you believe you need to pursue legal remedies or damages, please consult legal representation immediately. We do not have the ability to provide legal advice or individual guidance of any type, and nothing printed here should be construed as such.

What we can tell you is that many users have expressed a belief that they have been, or will be, forced to accept their Draftkings settlement offer under duress.

As a result, we are urging Draftkings to re-evaluate their offers, to correctly include the value of non-cash prizing, as well as a good faith “make good” for their sudden disruption of the Marketplace activity and Reignmakers Gameplay with no advanced notice.

In the meantime, a number of users have reached out to express their concern that they "believe Draftkings may have forgotten that operating gaming and fantasy sports businesses in most states is a PRIVILEGE not a right."

We generally agree based on the way Draftkings has chosen to handle this decision to shutter a product a large number of their customers were heavily invested in.

If you’d like to write to a state AG, Gaming Commission, or representatives of other government agencies to voice your concerns and/or request they evaluate Draftkings’ ability to operate in your state, we’re working to setup a comprehensive resource to help you generate and route these complaints.