How ALCS hitting spree by Blue Jays' Nathan Lukes triggered a U.S. betting scandal

All Nathan Lukes did during the Blue Jays run to the World Series was hit and hit … and hit some more.

Through no involvement of his own, however, the nine hits Lukes registered in the Jays ALCS win over Seattle Mariners in October placed his name — and performance — in the middle of a betting scandal in the U.S.

The issue, which publicly emerged this week, centred around bookmaker DraftKings attempt to void bets placed by Massachusetts resident who stood to cash more than $934,000 US on a series of multi-leg wagers he made on Lukes’ output at the plate during the seven-game series.

The bettor reportedly placed 27 separate parlay wagers totalling $12,950 US that combined Lukes getting five-plus, six-plus, seven-plus and eight-plus hits during the series.

So when Lukes finally stopped hitting in the dramatic seven-game series win over the M’s — a career-highlight week for a player who earned $766,800 in 2025 — made an opportunistic wagerer rich.

As any bettor knows, those separate wagers should not have been eligible for a parlay — the term for a multiple-leg wager — because they are essentially in the same market. But seeing an edge due to a mistake by the bookmaker, the customer took advantage of that clear error in the offering made by DraftKings and aggressively wagered to profit from the blunder.

DraftKings moved to void the wagers, arguing it was an obvious mistake on the company’s website and that the bettor knowingly and unfairly exploited the mistake by placing so many bets in a short period of time..

To void the bet, DraftKings needed to get approval from the Massachusetts Gaming Commission, which regulates wagering in the state. That request was denied this week as a five-person panel unanimously voted to turn down the DraftKings appeal and order the bettor paid.

“It’s the cost of doing business,” MGC commissioner Nakisha Skinner said in a statement, per Sports Betting News. “You have to be diligent in your offerings. This is an obvious error for DraftKings … the in-house controls should have caught this error.”

How did this happen?

According to the report in Sports Betting News, citing Andrew Steffen, the compliance operations manager of sports wagering of the MGC, a Massachusetts-based bettor made the parlay bests online on Oct. 15.

DraftKings reportedly noticed the error the next day and adjusted the Lukes bets on its menu and declaring the bets already made as unsettled.

The DraftKings error involved Lukes being listed as a “non participant” rather than a “player” which eliminated restrictions in place which bypassed restrictions against making a parlay bet with correlated selections.

That allowed the bettor to make the multi-leg bet despite the obvious — that if Lukes had more than eight hits, he’d also hit all the other legs as well, those being five, six and seven-plus hits.

DraftKings’ argument was that the bettor was clearly exploiting the error based on the number of wagers he made and the amount bet. The betting company’s director of legal, Pete Harrington, made that point to the Commission in the DraftKings argument.

Harrington argued that the customer violated DraftKings house rules which prohibit betting on “markets with obvious errors.”

“For all intents and purposes, we believe this customer was engaging in fraud,” Harrington said, per Sports Betting News. “It’s deceptive behaviour, with the intention to unethically gain at DraftKings expense.

“We don’t believe that behaviour should be rewarded or encouraged.”

DraftKings further argued that the customer’s wagering was an “extreme deviation from standard behaviours.”

According to Sports Betting News and other reports, the bettor made seven deposits to his account totalling close to $13,000, which was nearly double what he had deposited in his previous time wagering on the betting platform.

The Commission clearly felt otherwise and ordered the bettor to be paid.

And who says the house always wins?