Socure Blocks 50,000 Underage Betting Accounts in One Hour During Super Bowl

Socure, an age verification vendor for sportsbooks, blocked “more than 50,000 minors from creating new betting accounts” in a one-hour span during Super Bowl 60 on Feb. 8.

“It was stunning. They were scaling the walls,” said Rivka Gewirtz Little, chief growth officer at Socure.

USA TODAY first reported on Socure’s successful campaign to prevent underage bettors from accessing sportsbooks, including DraftKings, FanDuel, and Fanatics.

Super Bowl: More Than Triples Manipulation Attempts

Little cited internal audits and noted that Socure “typically blocks more than 99% of illegal attempts.” The company had its hands full in the hours before and during Super Bowl 60, detecting “attempts to manipulate birthdates at triple or more the usual rate.”

Mike Cook, head of fraud insights at Socure, said new account sign-ups “surged alongside the six pregame Super Bowl ads” for sportsbooks “almost to the minute.” FanDuel’s “Last Call for Football” was broadcast just prior to kickoff. DraftKings and Fanatics had ads during the game between the Patriots and Seahawks.

A variety of age manipulation types were detected:

• Synthetic fraud: Real, stolen, and fake information is used to create a new identity
• Identity fraud
• Document fraud

Socure also detected the “same government identification facial photo being used numerous times, tied to different users.” The company cross-references user information against public records, such as phone numbers, mailing addresses, and Social Security numbers.

“We saw age-washing attempts where kids were pulling together pieces of information to try to get around our systems,” Cook said. “It gives you a view that minors are trying to scam the system and using increasingly sophisticated methods to get around them.”

Little added, “The Super Bowl was a pressure test of how identity detection tools can stand up to the volume. It shows that minors are relentlessly going to attempt to challenge the systems, and they’re a formidable force.”

When you include prediction markets and online gaming users, more than 2.5 million new signups were recorded on Super Bowl Sunday.

Youth Being Inundated By Sports Betting Ads

The deluge of sports betting ads in the US “casts a giant net for customers that critics say has lured high schoolers, college kids, as well as those legally allowed to bet.”

That ramps up during the lead-up to the Super Bowl, which represents the biggest recruiting day for commercial sportsbooks. Common Sense Media (CSM), a nonprofit organization that reviews and provides ratings for media and technology, assessing their suitability for children, sent an open letter to NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell prior to the Big Game.

“Your league is one of the most powerful cultural institutions in the country, and the NFL has long positioned itself as a family-friendly institution,” CSM Founder James Steyer wrote. “If boys are being funneled into the betting pipeline as early as 11, you are not bystanders to this problem ‒ you are helping to architect this environment.”