Daily fantasy sports companies seek gambling approval overseas
Lawmakers in OH are preparing to review whether daily fantasy sports betting sites should be declared illegal gambling operations.
State Rep. Myra Crownover, R-Denton, sent a request to Paxton Thursday asking him about the two leading fantasy sports sites, in which participants pay entry fees to assemble fantasy teams using real athletes.
Meanwhile, Arkansas Attorney General Leslie Rutledge is evaluating how to proceed. As John Oliver explained on Sunday, a recent study of daily fantasy sports sites revealed that 91% of all profits won went to just 1.3% of players.
Oliver gleefully points out that despite the sites’ constant repetition of the phrase “skill based”, the games are actually extremely similar to many forms of gambling, even in the words of their own executives, who compare daily fantasy to online poker.
State Republicans are launching an unprecedented grass-roots effort to challenge Gov. Cuomo’s controversial plan to impose a $15-an-hour minimum wage on all NY businesses – a near-70 percent increase and the highest in the nation. That doesn’t mean other daily fantasy sports operators, like Yahoo and CBS, are in the clear. DraftKings now controls roughly 40 percent of the United States Internet fantasy sports market; FanDuel around 55 percent. Ohio’s attorney general says the state Legislature is the appropriate body to enact any ban.
“I’m not going to use a several-hundred-year-old criminal statute that was written at a time when this kind of industry was never envisioned”, she told reporters on Wednesday, according to published news reports.
“FanDuel has always been compliant with federal and state law and we will cooperate with all parties about how to define the right set of rules for our industry as it continues to grow”, an emailed response from FanDuel’s press office states regarding Texas’ inquiry.
But while numerous states are now grappling to answer the question whether to allow these companies to operate within their borders, the matter is already a long-established issue in Montana. NY could follow suit, but the headlines would not be as catchy. “Because both companies have refused to follow the law in our state, we will take action to enforce state law”. Both companies have said they intend to fight any shutdown demand in court.
The NY attorney general believes illegitimate gambling causes social and economic harm, as well as misleads consumers. But it seems NY is mainly concerned about New Yorkers struggling with pathological gambling only when those New Yorkers are losing their money to private companies.