Jacksonville Jaguars Want FanDuel to Refund $20M Stolen by a Team Finance Manager

An NFL team wants millions back from a sports betting service.

The Jacksonville Jaguars, a team that recently found out that a finance manager stole some $22 million and lost most of it on sports bets with FanDuel, an online betting service, has asked FanDuel to refund the money, ESPN.com reported.

Amit Patel, who worked for the Jaguars for five years, pleaded guilty in December to stealing the millions through the use of a virtual credit card the team used for expenses. About $20 million was paid directly to FanDuel, and another $1 million to DraftKings, a rival online betting site, ESPN said, citing knowledgeable sources.

It’s unclear if the team has much of a chance to recover the money. Federal anti-money-laundering laws appear to require sports betting operations to ensure that funds were not illegally obtained. But the rules may not apply to daily fantasy games, the sports news site reported.

Patel’s sentencing has been set for March. He could face up to 30 years in prison.

Reinsurers’ underwriting margins are expected to peak in 2024 on the significant price rises and tighter terms and conditions achieved during 2023 and in the January 2024 renewals, which will likely lead to softer market conditions in 2025, according to a report from Fitch Ratings.

Strong returns and rising risk appetite will increasingly attract additional capital from traditional reinsurers and alternative capital providers, said the report titled “Reinsurers Defend New Business Margins at January 2024 Renewals.”

“We expect reinsurance capacity to rise in 2024, prompting softer market conditions in 2025,” said Robert Mazzuoli, director, Fitch Ratings, in a comment accompanying the report.

“As a consequence, the supply and demand dynamics will start to move in favor of cedents again, despite a continuous high demand for reinsurance protection,” the report continued.

Most lines of business saw price increases of 5%-10% during the January 2024 renewals, but premium hikes broadly followed claims inflation patterns, Fitch said, explaining that only loss-affected lines of business and regions experienced significant price hikes during this year’s January renewals.

“Terms and conditions such as limits, attachment points or exclusions were broadly unchanged.”

The report said that traditional reinsurers and institutional investors again increased their risk appetite for higher layers of property catastrophe covers, which was a reversal from their approach from a year ago when there was a lack of capacity and strong pressure to raise prices in the reinsurance and retro markets.

Rising Capital Levels

“Strong earnings generation, the stabilization of financial markets, and major reinsurers’ move to the accounting standard IFRS 17 led to a strong recovery in reinsurance capital in 2023,” the report said.

Fitch expects reinsurance capital to have grown 11% to around US$535 billion by year-end 2023, which partially reverses losses seen in 2022. In addition, alternative capital was expected to have grown by 13% in 2023, to around US$105 billion, as a result of the record numbers of catastrophe bonds issued in 2023.

Fitch attributed this growth to “very attractive returns on the back of the absence of large loss events, attractive pricing and a strong investment return on collateral pools.”

Indeed, the ratings agency said, the property catastrophe market was able to attract capital from reinsurers and institutional investors given the very strong returns seen in 2023 (as a result of the absence of large-scale hurricanes in the US).

“The rise in available capital supports our view of increasing reinsurance capacity in 2024,” said Fitch, which also forecasts an improvement in underlying profitability for the global reinsurance sector in 2024.