West Virginia’s sports bettors will have to wait several more weeks until they’re able to place a mobile wager with DraftKings and its local casino partner.
In late May, the West Virginia Lottery – which oversees all gaming activity in the state – said that it had successfully completed testing of DraftKings’ mobile betting app. The Lottery office suggested the app would likely soft-launch the following week. Fast forward to this week, and the state’s sports bettors are still waiting.
On Wednesday, Lottery director John Myers told the WV Metro News that the launch would be delayed “several more weeks” in order for the state to resolve some lingering issues over the location of two DraftKings’ data servers: one to process actual wagering data and the other to oversee customers’ digital wallets.
Myers said the betting server was already in place at DraftKings’ local casino partner, Penn National Gaming’s Hollywood Casino at Charles Town Races. But the wallet server was currently situated in New Jersey, where DraftKings launched its first US sports betting operation last summer. DraftKings needs to “split two functions that are on that server,” and that would take time.