It’s one of the biggest sports-betting days in the world — and many D.C. residents may have been left out of it.

GambetDC, the city’s sole official sports-betting app, did not work for users of Apple phones and tablets during the entirety of the Super Bowl, likely costing D.C. revenue from wagers placed on the Los Angeles Rams or Cincinnati Bengals.

Users of the app — which is operated by the D.C. Lottery — received a message on Sunday afternoon warning that it was “experiencing a technical issue” and would be unavailable after 4:15 p.m., just over two hours from kickoff. In a statement, the D.C. Lottery said that bettors could still place wagers using the Gambet website, Android app, or at 39 retail locations across the city. It also offered them a $10 free bet “for this inconvenience.”

The app remained offline on those platforms until Monday afternoon. In an email, a spokeswoman for the D.C. Lottery said the problem stemmed from an update gone wrong. “[The] mobile app provider did not obtain approval from Apple for a required update resulting in the temporary removal of the Gambet DC mobile app from the Apple iOS platform,” they wrote.

The technical snafu is yet another setback for the oft-maligned sports-betting app, the only one that can be accessed anywhere in the city. Born of a controversial $215 million sole-source contract approved by the D.C. Council in 2019 for Greek lottery contractor Intralot, the GambetDC app was launched in mid-2020 to withering reviews of its usability (“By far the worst betting platform I have ever seen,” read one review last month), as well as complaints about poor odds.

That has translated into lagging revenue for city coffers; according to a report from the D.C. Auditor published late last year, from May 2020 to March 2021 the app grossed roughly $5.5 million, of which only $444,000 went to the city. (Initial estimates for 2021 had the city taking in $22 million.) By comparison, the William Hill brick-and-mortar sportsbook in the Capital One Arena brought in $1.8 million in tax revenue in all of 2021.

“When 5 [D.C. Council] members including myself voted against this contract, we knew it was bad but even I didn’t foresee it being this abysmal,” tweeted D.C. Councilmember Elissa Silverman (I-At Large) on Sunday evening, referring to the 2019 vote on the sole-source sports-betting contract for Intralot.

The app’s travails also come as sports-betting competition has picked up, both in D.C. and regionally. In the city, BetMGM recently announced plans to build a sportsbook at Nationals Park, while FanDuel is similarly set to have one at Audi Field. In Adams Morgan, the bar Grand Central has also established its own sportsbook. And just like William Hill, the new sportsbooks will be allowed to have their own apps. (Under D.C. law, GambetDC can be used anywhere within city limits, while operators of physical sportsbooks can have apps that work within a two-block radius of their location.)

But of more possible concern to D.C. is Virginia, where sports betting launched last year. And unlike in D.C., Virginia has opened up competition to private operators of sports-betting apps, like FanDuel and DraftKings. (Those are accessible to any D.C. resident who crosses the Potomac River.) And last month sports-betting kicked off in Maryland, with multiple mobile options expected to roll out later this year.

D.C.’s existing contract with Intralot does not preclude the city from opening up to more mobile sports-betting operators, and a number of them — including FanDuel, BetMGM, Bally’s, and Fanatics — are working with the same lobbyist in the city. But at least one lawmakers seems to think it’s not yet time to consider that option.

“I don’t think enough there’s been enough time post-pandemic to see how this actually plays out and whether this is just about competitors trying to have the entire market or that the District really can’t do this,” said D.C. Council Chairman Phil Mendelson, who did concede that the timing of Sunday’s outage was “stupid.”

“Let’s give it a little bit of time and then assess,” he said of the app’s performance.

Asked Monday about the app’s technical mishap, Mayor Muriel Bowser said she would be asking the D.C. Chief Financial Officer — whose office oversees the lottery — about it.

“I expect to get an explanation,” she said. “Obviously if we’re going to have any system in the government including for sports betting… it should work, and it should especially work on the biggest sports day of the year.”

This post has been updated with a comment from the D.C. Lottery.