Laid off from DraftKings.

What DraftKings layoffs have meant for employees

Recruiting and engineering have come up in more than one DraftKings cut. The 2023 reorganization trimmed recruiting staff because the company expected to hire less that year and shifted its engineers toward mobile development, the Boston Globe reported. People in software engineering and recruitment were among the former employees whose February 2026 LinkedIn posts NEXT.io cited, and engineering turned up again in November, according to Front Office Sports. If you work in either group, those three reported rounds are the most specific comparisons the coverage gives you.

The 2026 reporting leans on the people who were cut. NEXT.io’s February story started from former staff’s LinkedIn posts, and in November Front Office Sports spoke with two employees from that week’s cuts and one let go in an earlier round, while others posted about losing their jobs. Posting about these cuts goes back to 2023, when the Globe quoted a fraud team lead whose position was being eliminated “due to company org changes and realignment.” Those accounts are unverified, and they’re where the later rounds’ scope has come from. If you were cut in February 2026 and are explaining it to a future employer, the company’s statement that the changes touched roles across the organization fits a reorganization wider than one team, and our page on explaining a layoff covers putting that into words.

DraftKings’ 2023 cut crossed borders as well as teams. Front Office Sports noted that the people affected were primarily based outside the U.S., and Massachusetts, where the Boston-based company employed more than 1,300 people, lost 15 jobs in that round. Its 2025 annual report counts employees in thirteen countries. For a U.S. job, our Massachusetts unemployment and New Jersey unemployment pages set out how to claim benefits in the two states its layoffs have been tied to in reporting and filings, and the state-by-state benefits pages cover everywhere else.

The plan to close the Atlantic City studio grew out of a deal. The studio was in the Golden Nugget Atlantic City and had relaunched in 2022 after DraftKings bought Golden Nugget Online Gaming, while the brick-and-mortar Golden Nugget properties stayed with Fertitta Entertainment. The company tied the change to finalizing that integration, telling NEXT.io that third-party studios in Atlantic City would take over its in-house live dealer operations and that its live dealer games would carry on uninterrupted. Its staff learned of the change about three months ahead of the date the company gave for it, by our count, and the work the company described as continuing would run under other operators.

The 2026 cuts followed two years of growth. DraftKings counted more than 4,400 employees at the close of 2023, over 5,100 a year later and more than 5,500 by the end of 2025, Front Office Sports noted, and when the February round came, the Boston Globe described a company tightening its belt amid growing competition from lightly regulated prediction markets. The company’s statement spoke of aligning people “with the most important priorities and areas of investment,” and a Citizens analyst wrote that the savings should give it a “cushion” to meet Wall Street’s expectations while it spent more on its new prediction market. That’s the setting the reporting gives for 2026, a bigger company spending more on a new product.

If you hold DraftKings RSUs and can still open your grant notices, consider saving a copy of each one and its Exhibit A, since those schedules set your vesting dates. If you’ve been offered a package, pushing back on a first offer is what our page on negotiating severance takes up.

Your stock and equity

Most full-time DraftKings employees receive an equity award when they’re hired, and about half are eligible for recurring awards, according to the company’s 2025 annual report. The company’s RSU agreement form, filed in May 2020 under its 2020 Incentive Award Plan, gives the vesting schedule in each grant notice’s Exhibit A precedence over the notice, the agreement and the plan when their terms conflict.