Fantasy sports company FanDuel bans employees from other sites

Also from the statement: “DraftKings and FanDuel have made a decision to prohibit employees from participating in online fantasy sports contests for money”.

FanDuel says it has also hired former U.S. Attorney General Michael Mukasey to evaluate its internal controls. The National Football League isn’t an investor, though individual teams can have advertising deals with daily fantasy sports companies.

In a letter to both companies, Attorney General Eric T. Schneiderman demanded the names, job titles and descriptions of any employees who aggregate and compile a wide range of data that perhaps could be used to gain a personal advantage – including ownership percentages and pricing algorithms.

The House of Representatives could hold hearings this fall, said Representative Frank Pallone, the top Democrat on the Energy and Commerce Committee.

But research done by Sports Business Daily shows that just 1.3% of players took home about 90% of the winnings in the first half of the fantasy baseball season.

DraftKings later announced it pulled Tuesday advertisements from ESPN, but it was unclear whether that would extend into the future.

DraftKings said in a statement: “DraftKings has been conducting a thorough investigation, including examining records of internal communications and access to our database, interviewing our employees, and sharing information regarding the incident with FanDuel. Now the two companies are defending themselves after a scandal erupted when a DraftKings employee won big money on the FanDuel site.

The industry, projected to bring in $14 billion in revenue by 2020, has been under scrutiny after DraftKings employee Ethan Haskell admitted to “inadvertently” releasing sensitive data about a large tournament in the same week that he reportedly won $350,000 on DraftKings’ rival site FanDuel. Prior to the Times’ report, the firms had allowed their employees to play for money at each other’s websites.

FanDuel released a statement Wednesday that it has permanently banned its employees from playing on other fantasy sites.

Both companies claimed that Mr. Haskell had been investigated and came out clean with no wrongdoing.

To the surprise of no one who has been following this, daily fantasy sports (DFS)-the sports betting phenomenon sweeping the United States-is in a few hot water. The law determined that fantasy sports are a game of skill, not chance. I reached out to FanDuel for more clarification on this matter, but a company spokesperson would not comment any further.

“Despite how mainstream these sites have become, though, the legal landscape governing these activities remains murky and should be reviewed”, Pallone said. We also plan to work with the entire fantasy sports industry on this specific issue so that fans everywhere can continue to enjoy and trust the games they love.