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The fantasy football industry has been rocked this week by a cheating scandal involving a National Fantasy Football Championship employee. The company, a part of the SportsHub Games Network, has acknowledged that the employee - who has now been fired - colluded with a user to make prohibited lineup changes in their NFFC Post-Season Hold 'Em Contest, an event that offers a six-figure payout.
Unusual activity was first noticed in the contest during the Divisional Round of the NFL Playoffs by multiple hosts of the Ship Chasing podcast, a popular high-stakes fantasy sports show hosted by Peter Overzet, Pat Kerrane, and Ben Gretch.
Let's dive into the cheating scandal involving NFFC's Post-Season Hold 'Em Contest and discuss what the contest is, how the accused parties cheated, the evidence discovered against them, and how NFFC is dealing with this issue.
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What Is The NFFC Post-Season Hold 'Em Contest?
NFFC's Post-Season Hold 'Em Contest is one of many that the popular site hosts during the NFL Playoffs. This particular contest featured just over 1,500 entrants who each paid an entry fee of $200 in an attempt to win the contest's $150,000 first prize.
The contest differs from regular season fantasy football leagues and NFL DFS in that it involves lineups consisting only of players who are active in the NFL Playoffs. Game theory and strategy come heavily into play, as entrants pick a player from each of the 12 playoff teams initially but can continue to adjust their lineups as the postseason progresses and teams are knocked out.
This incorporates different nuances from popular games like Best Ball, DFS, and other playoff challenge formats. Strategy is a crucial part of the contest and game theory is heavily applied by the entrants.
How Did They Cheat?
To boil things down into the simplest of terms, an NFFC employee made prohibited changes to an entrant's lineup after a game was already underway. As in all fantasy football formats, lineup changes can't be made for a player after his game has started, as the player becomes "locked" into lineups.
However, the Ship Chasing podcast group noticed that a lineup they were in close competition with had made a player swap over an hour after Sunday's Divisional Round matchup between the Kansas City Chiefs and Buffalo Bills game had started, a move that was impossible according to the rules of the Hold 'Em contest.
The lineup in question, entered by a user named Red Solo Cup, started the game with Chiefs wide receiver Rashee Rice on the roster, but approximately one hour and 15 minutes after the 6:30 PM ET kickoff of the Kansas City vs. Buffalo game - and just approximately three minutes after Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce scored a touchdown against the Bills - the lineup suddenly featured Kelce instead of Rice, a change that was against the rules of the contest and gave the lineup significantly more points in this instance.
Finding The Evidence
After discovering this hard-to-believe occurrence, the impacted members of the Ship Chasing squad went to work figuring out exactly what happened. Piecing together screenshots of lineups before and at the time of lock, transaction logs that occurred after the game kicked off, and social media interactions, the group was able to uncover and confirm not only the prohibited Rice to Kelce player swap, but also a long-standing relationship between the user who entered the lineup, Red Solo Cup, and an NFFC administrator.
We recently caught an NFFC employee making illegal moves in their playoff Hold 'Em contest.
We explained how we uncovered it & everything we currently know in this video: https://t.co/tSO0hnkhNa
— Chasing Kerrane (@ShipChasing) January 25, 2024
Further digging indicated that this wasn't the first time this sort of impropriety had taken place in this specific Hold 'Em contest. The Ship Chasing crew discovered that a similar occurrence had happened the week before in the Wild Card Round of the NFL Playoffs when one of Red Solo Cup's lineups switched out Miami Dolphins running back Raheem Mostert - who had a bad game in an opening round loss to Kansas City - for Green Bay Packers running back Aaron Jones - who put up monster numbers in the team's upset victory over the Dallas Cowboys - after lineups were locked.
In addition to the two confirmed instances of cheating that took place in this year's Hold 'Em contest, it was discovered that the user in question had also won $20,000 in the 2019 edition of the Hold 'Em contest, which raises new questions about the number of contests that might have been compromised by the two bad actors before they were caught.
The Fallout
After reviewing the allegations of cheating, NFFC reacted swiftly by firing the employee in question and banning the user for life. The company's founder Greg Ambrosius released the following statement:
“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. As a result of its internal investigation, an employee was terminated and a contest participant has been banned from further play on our platforms.”
A full scale, deep investigation needs to occur into this player’s past leagues. Both NFBC/NFFC. Many leagues could have been tainted in the past. We need clarity here. Just my $.02
— The_Gildz (@The_Gildz) January 25, 2024
While it appears as though NFFC is doing all it can to handle this situation quickly and fairly, the integrity of the entire fantasy sports industry is now under the microscope within the fantasy football community. Popular fantasy analyst and Ship Chasing co-host Peter Overzet relayed those concerns to ESPN, saying in part... "I think this is incredibly damaging [to the fantasy industry]," he added. "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."
Ambrosius also acknowledged the seriousness of the situation, saying... "Nothing is more important than the integrity of a pay-to-play contest," he said while speaking to ESPN. "We have built up 20-plus years of integrity through transparency and everything we've done. And by one action, it's put all of it in question. It's put me and everybody associated with our company in question. We're doing everything we can to make sure that we know everything about what happened, let people know, and to make sure it never happens again."
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