ESPN cuts sponsored daily fantasy sports elements from shows

The letters were prompted by media reports a DraftKings employee may have had access to valuable company data before winning second place in a FanDuel contest. Broadly, the daily and weekly games require an entry fee – usually anywhere from 25 cents to $1,000 – and prizes can reach millions.

The fantasy sports sites allow participants to build teams with players they believe will score the most points and then enter assorted contests at different price ranges.

Fantasy sports have always seemed a bit too good to be true, now we have the proof.

This week, ever so predictably, the fantasy racket had its first major scandal. That’s you, fantasy newbie fish.

An employee with one of the companies, DraftKings, admitted last week to inadvertently releasing data before the start of the third week of National Football League games. This data is typically released after all the lineups are finalized. FanDuel spokesperson Justin Sacco told ESPN’s Darren Rovell that 0.3 percent of money won at her site went to DraftKings employees, an estimated $6 million.

Up until Tuesday, FanDuel and DraftKings employees were allowed to play on rival sites for money. “We want to set the record straight”. The company countered that Haskell had received the data 40 minutes after the deadline to lock in his roster on FanDuel, citing an internal investigation.

The Times story also notes that Haskell apparently won $350,000 that week playing in a comparable tournament at FanDuel. This clearly demonstrates that this employee could not possibly have used the information in question to make decisions about his FanDuel lineup.

Getting that early information ahead of the curve could serve as an advantage.

9 photo, an employee in the software development department of DraftKings, a daily fantasy sports site, walks past screens displaying the company’s online system stats in Boston.

‘Employees with access to this data are vigorously monitored by internal fraud controls teams, and we have no evidence anyone misused it’.

“As advertising has grown, there’s been a lot of scrutiny”, Peter Schoenke, President of Rotowire.com and Chairman of the Fantasy Sports Trade Association said in a recent Star Tribune interview before Monday’s controversy. We’ve heard from users that they would appreciate more clarity about the rules for this issue. But both companies also agreed to temporarily ban their workers from playing daily fantasy sports for money at each other’s sites.

Maybe it just takes a scandal to make an industry rethink its policies – and come up with a solution before would-be regulators do it for them. Fantasy sports games are dominated by “whales”, who win all the big money – many aided by sophisticated computer programs. For example, there are varying restrictions for fantasy sports in Arizona, Iowa, Louisiana, Montana and Washington.

Many in the highly regulated casino industry insist daily fantasy sports leagues are gambling sites, shouldn’t be treated any differently than traditional sports betting and, as a result, should be regulated. Since there’s an element of skill involved, technically, under the law, this duck is exempt from federal sports gambling laws.