Amazon AWS Outage Disrupts Global Gambling, Social Media, Financial Services

An Amazon Web Services (AWS) outage on October 20 caused widespread disruptions affecting various online platforms, including major sports betting sites such as FanDuel and DraftKings. The outage, centered in AWS's US-EAST-1 region, led to difficulties for users trying to log in, place bets, or withdraw funds, generating frustration and uncertainty among sports bettors just before Monday Night Football. FanDuel and DraftKings acknowledged the issues via social media, with FanDuel reporting full service restoration by late Monday night, while DraftKings experienced lingering withdrawal processing delays. Other sportsbooks like Fanatics were also impacted, with some bettors considering switching to platforms not reliant on AWS, such as ESPN Bet, which has built-in redundancy. Amazon attributed the outage to an internal network load balancer monitoring subsystem but confirmed all systems were restored by early evening. The incident highlighted the risks of heavy dependence on AWS cloud infrastructure for critical online services, especially in high-stakes environments like sports gambling.