A Stupid Gamble: DraftKings Ripping Off Baseball Prospectus Articles

[bosox188]

I wasn't quite sure where to best put this one, but certainly seems newsworthy. Jesse Roche of BP confirmed after a user pointed this out to him on Twitter, that DraftKings apparently ripped off BP's Top 500 Dynasty Rankings article from October 2023 and published it as their own two days ago. This is content that falls behind BP's paid subscription, which DraftKings put out for free and did not credit them.

I have a BP subscription and I did some spot checks on their rankings vs. DK... and yea, any random number I picked, sure enough it's the same player. Not only that, but all of the notes and caveats listed up front in the BP article are repeated in the DK one, almost word for word.


This is the original BP article and I'd rather not link to the DK one to give them any clicks, but it's there in the Twitter thread.

 

[Lose Remerswaal]

i assumed DK, et al, were making enough money from gambling that they wouldn’t have to steal content.

 

[joe dokes]

i assumed DK, et al, were making enough money from gambling that they wouldn’t have to steal content.

The next time an entity or individual that "is making enough money" forgoes an opportunity to "make even more" (without it costing anything) will be the first time.

 

[Lose Remerswaal]

The next time an entity or individual that "is making enough money" forgoes an opportunity to "make even more" (without it costing anything) will be the first time.

If they weren’t a Public company I’d agree. But we could see pushback on management allowing this to happen

 

[Jed Zeppelin]

If I had to guess, I'd think this probably comes down to a very lazy writer rather than some kind of company directive. Figures hey, who will notice, it's behind a paywall.

 

[SirPsychoSquints]

If I had to guess, I'd think this probably comes down to a very lazy writer rather than some kind of company directive. Figures hey, who will notice, it's behind a paywall.

One way or another, it's a lack of controls in place. Editors, etc.

 

[joe dokes]

If I had to guess, I'd think this probably comes down to a very lazy writer rather than some kind of company directive. Figures hey, who will notice, it's behind a paywall.

Ultimately, probably correct. But probably indirectly incentivized to do so.

 

[bosox188]

One way or another, it's a lack of controls in place. Editors, etc.

Agreed, I certainly don't believe there's a company directive, but a culture of churning out low effort content with no editorial process would lead to something like this.

 

[Philip Jeff Frye]

The AI probably did it. The whole thing is just a giant plagiarism machine, right?