Fox News Flash top entertainment headlines for Jan. 6
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Jade Roper Tolbert, a former hopeful on “The Bachelor," is under fire for allegedly colluding her way to a $1 million daily fantasy football contest over the weekend, according to ESPN.
Roper Tolbert, a relatively new fantasy sports player in only her first season playing fantasy sports, reportedly entered the maximum of 150 individual lineups into DraftKings’ “Millionaire Maker” contest for the weekend’s four NFL wild-card games and was rebuffed by contestants after the entity tweeted to her that she had won the big prize.
The outcry immediately forced DraftKings to investigate the victory, where out of more than 105,000 lineup entries of eight players and a team defense and special teams emerged victorious. One of Roper Tolbert’s lineups featured Houston Texans quarterback Deshaun Watson, Minnesota Vikings running back Dalvin Cook and Seattle Seahawks wide receiver DK Metcalf, and finished with 180.79 points.
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The win spurred allegations of collusion with her husband, Tanner Tolbert – who on his own merit is widely known as a high-volume daily fantasy player, according to the outlet. Tanner and Jade proved to be each other’s match during the second season of the “Bachelor” spinoff series, “Bachelor in Paradise,” before tying the knot in 2016.
Per ESPN, the couple combined submitted 300 lineups at $25 per entry into the DraftKings contest portal and fantasy experts who tore through the Tolbert’s entries found that of their 300 entries, 298 were unique, meaning they lacked duplicate entries.
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The pair also reportedly entered the maximum number of entries every week of the NFL season.
DraftKings informed the Tolberts on Monday of their probe into whether their win was legitimate, and a spokesperson for the fantasy-betting site issued a statement to ESPN, saying, "We take the integrity and fairness of our contests very seriously and are looking into this matter.”
In a statement to Fox News, a company spokesperson said: “The DraftKings compliance team reviews the results of all major contests to ensure they comply with our terms of use and applicable state regulations. We take the integrity and fairness of our DFS contests seriously, and prizes are not paid out until our reviews are complete.”
TV personalities Tanner Tolbert (L) and Jade Roper attend the American Humane Association's 5th Annual Hero Dog Awards 2015 at The Beverly Hilton Hotel on September 19, 2015 in Beverly Hills, California. (Photo by Chris Weeks/Getty Images for American Humane Association)
Meanwhile, Jade and Tanner, told Fox News in a statement: "We respect that Draft Kings feels they must do their due diligence in regard to Jade winning their $1million dollar prize for the fantasy contest for the NFL’s wild-card round this weekend. Though we must ponder, would the questions, accusations and curiosity about this win be the same if the winner had been male and someone who wasn’t already in the public eye? It is incredibly important for us to establish that Jade’s win is nothing more than pure luck and we are confident that Draft Kings will determine the same."
Tanner also vehemently denied any wrongdoing or involvement in collusion on his or his wife’s part to ESPN.
"It is incredibly important for us to establish that Jade's win is nothing more than pure luck," the couple said in an emailed statement to ESPN on Monday night. "We are confident that DraftKings will determine the same."
During an interview with the outlet on Monday, Tanner again called foul on the claims and revealed they even had a losing streak going into the weekend’s NFL wild-card matchups.
"We each put in our separate players, in our separate accounts and rooted for own players," he said. “No one has ever said a peep about us when we lost for 17 straight weeks. Then, of course, somehow Jade picked the right lineup, got the million and the spotlight got shone on it. And people, especially since she's a woman, assume that I do it all for her. If I had won, I bet no one would've raised a flag."
While he admitted that the pair do discuss NFL players, they went with different quarterbacks for their lineups with Jade favoring the QBs in the AFC, while Tanner selected NFC gunslingers for his entries.
"I thought Drew Brees and Carson Wentz would have big days," Tolbert said. "Obviously, I was wrong. But Jade definitely wanted to go with the other quarterbacks. I think partly she likes rooting against me."
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He maintained that although Jade wasn’t initially into sports, the more she played it from a fantasy standpoint, the more invested she became and the more she learned to love the sport because Tanner loved to play.
"She hated sports for the longest time," Tanner said. "She decided to get into it this year, and it's actually made her more of a sports fan. She never really cared about the games until she had a rooting interest."
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Of the allegations and social media backlash, Tanner said they’ve received death threats on Twitter.
"Crazy stuff," Tanner said. "It's sad. Honestly, it's taken a lot of the fun out of it."
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