NY Bans Daily Fantasy Sports Betting

“We will pursue this fight to the fullest to ensure that NY fantasy sports fans do not need to stop playing the games they love”.

FanDuel’s Nigel Eccles said its lawyers will try to persuade Attorney General Eric Schneiderman over the next five days that their business is lawful and that its 500,000 customers in the state should be able to keep playing.

But in cease-and-desist orders sent on Tuesday to DraftKings and FanDuel, two of the biggest daily fantasy sports companies, ny Attorney General Eric Schneiderman said their games “easily meet the definition of gambling”.

FanDuel said it believes Schneiderman’s letter, which refers to the company as a bookmaking operation, has no basis in NY law.

“As dominoes continue to fall, my approach may be more palatable to the (daily fantasy sports) industry now”, said Dunbar, R-Westmoreland. If they don’t, Schneiderman’s letter to the companies notes he intends to file a lawsuit, though officials from both companies say they will fight it. The top 1 percent of players, he wrote, take home most of the prizes.

As weve pointed out before, and as everyone with a television set or Internet-connected device knows, FanDuel and DraftKings, the daily fantasy giants, blanketed the USA market in ads at the beginning of the National Football League season this fall.

“I think anybody looking at it acknowledges this is a form of gambling”.

Bank of America and American Express said they are continuing to allow customers to use their debit or credit cards to play fantasy sports while the companies monitor the situation.

Assemblyman Kenneth Zebrowski, D-New City, Rockland County, called on Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie, D-Bronx, to create a task force to examine the industry and whether it is legal in NY.

FanDuel and DraftKings allow users to pay money to enter daily or weekly contests, where they select a lineup of players in a particular sport and are rewarded based on those players’ performance.

“This is the beginning, not the end of the legal process”, said Marc Zwillinger, counsel to FanDuel, to reporters on Wednesday. We are working with the global law firm Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher LLP on all civil matters, investigations and regulatory inquiries, including the current situation in NY.

On the opposite side of the country, Nevada shut down daily fantasy sports sites last month, and in California, mounting state legislation could deal a similar blow, despite residents who disagree with the concept of an all-out ban. That same week DraftKings executives confirmed that Haskell inadvertently released player ownership data for its Millionaire Maker contest before a few National Football League games had been played, showing that he had what amounted to inside information that could be used to leverage an owner’s chances of winning. Both sites have now banned employees from taking part in a competitor’s daily sports-fantasy offerings.

“The point is, I’ve got to be careful even if I win”, Whitehead says of DraftKings and FanDuel. In Washington, the gambling commission specifically concluded that fantasy sports wagering — whether as a casual, season-long endeavor among friends or as a daily, high-stakes bet placed online — is illegal because the outcome is materially affected by chance.

“There is a deep disappointment”, said FanDuel CEO Eccles in today’s teleconference.

Indeed, for years the “daily fantasy sports” industry has escaped the scrutiny of regulators.