Tampa Bay Buccaneers Player Injury Prompted $11.5M Refunds to Bettors

Bookmakers are loath to return player funds, but a recent injury in the NFL forced their hand, with operators dishing out millions back to punters Image Source: Shutterstock.com

Tampa Bay Buccaneerswide receiver Emeka Egbukais starting his NFL career with a bit of a difficult spell. The young ace suffered an injury that made him unable to attend the game versus the San Francisco 49ers, forcing DraftKings and Fanatics to repay bettors who had placed wagers on the athlete’s performance.

Egbuka Action Gets Canceled, with Bets Repaid to Players

A total of $11.5 millionwas returned to gamblers, under the terms and conditions the two platforms use to ease tension between gamblers and maintain their fairness. Fanatics was acting under the Fair Play insurance program, and DraftKings, under its own Early Exit.

However, DraftKings bore the bulk of the sum, with $10 million paid back to gamblers, whereas Fanatics only had to foot the much more moderate $1.5 million bill. This is to be expected as DraftKings commands a much larger portion of the gambling market and naturally attracts more action on its market.

While this sounds like a great way to maintain player confidence in its brand, Fanatics only started to issue back these wagers at the beginning of the NFL Season, realizing that dissatisfied players are, in fact, non-committal players.

DraftKings introduced its own Fair Play policy in August 2025, ahead of the NFL season, following the example of other sportsbooks. In the meantime, this “accident” is an interesting insight into what bettors think of Egbuka and how much they are willing to ride on him.

Egbuka, for his part, has been fairly quiet on social media, not least because irate bettors are often trigger-happy and like to blame athletes for their performance – whether good or bad, injury-related or not.