4:22 PM
The final score and point spread of a mid-major college basketball game Saturday was impacted by a stat-keeping error that caused some sportsbooks to pay out winning wagers on both teams.
The mistake occurred in the second half of the game. A made free throw by Illinois State's Josiah Strong was recorded as a miss. Illinois State was a 10-point favorite and went on to win by nine.
Chicago State's athletic department was working with the NCAA to correct the score after they identified a discrepancy. The NCAA did not reply immediately.
The sports communications departments at colleges track statistics and send them to Genius Sports, the official dataminator of the NCAA.
Chris Dougan, the chief communications officer of Genius Sports, said in an email that the technology provider to the NCAA facilitates the collection of official data by NCAA schools on their games. The official game score is decided by the game referee.
Human error can occur from time to time during the stat-keeping process. Errors involving halftime scores are the most common, and the over/under on rushing or passing yards in football can sometimes take days to be updated.
"In terms of the actual final game score being incorrect, that is very rare," said Jay Croucher, the director of trading for sportsbook PointsBet.
U.S. Integrity sent an alert to its sportsbook clients on Sunday about the possibility of a discrepancy in the scoring between Illinois State and Chicago State. The incorrect score was still up on both athletic programs' websites Monday afternoon, as well as on most major media outlets.
The first sportsbooks to announce that they would pay out on any bets that would have been winners at the corrected score was PointsBet.
The final score of the Chicago State vs Illinois State College Basketball game was incorrect.
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Caesar decided to pay out both outcomes with the spread listed at 9.5.
December 13, 2021.
"We let all bets be winners, the ones that were with the incorrect score and the ones that would've won with the correction," he said. There's a statute of limitations where we don't want to come after people's money two days later, particularly on a game like that.
The game had a light interest in betting and sportsbooks were not out a lot of money to honor winning bets. Illinois sportsbooks are not allowed to take bets on events involving in-state programs. The error was brought to light on social media and caused payouts.
The cost of doing business is the result of statistical errors.
"If there's an incorrect final score on the Super Bowl, we'll have to see about that," he said.
