Fans Flock to DraftKings, FanDuel Despite Controversy

If you weren’t annoyed at DraftKings and FanDuel already, the New York Times has revealed more shady inner-workings of the fantasy sports businesses. Of course, this wasn’t enough to stop a class action lawsuit from being filed against both companies late this week. You’ve likely seen advertisements for sites like FanDuel and DraftKings.

Fanduel has been my choice for a little more than a year. He recently sat down with DraftKings co-founder Jason Robins for an extensive interview.

Yahoo seems to have made the right call to go with its own platform unlike ESPN which teamed up with DraftKings.

DraftKings: Fox Sports, Major League Baseball, the National Hockey League, Major League Soccer, The Madison Square Garden Company and Legends, and The Kraft Group (owners of the New England Patriots).

But Ed Feigenbaum, editor of Indiana Gaming Insight, predicts a showdown between Gov. Mike Pence, an unabashed opponent of gambling expansion, and the Indiana attorney general’s office, based on differing interpretations of the legality of fantasy sports.

“Recent reports raise additional questions about the safety, fairness, and integrity of these new platforms for fan engagement”, the aide said. It raised eyebrows the same employee, Ethan Haskell, also won $350,000 on rival FanDuel the same weekend.

Whatever is proposed, though, must close the loophole in a 2006 federal law, which fantasy companies are now exploiting. FanDuel is also reviewing its practices.

By hooking children on fantasy football, the NFL hopes to lock in another generation for its television ratings – and a few will be hooked on gambling, too.

For Yahoo, the venture into paid fantasy sports is relatively new. If they repeat that scale of aggressive marketing in the United Kingdom, we fear it may fuel a rise in sports gambling amongst young adults.

The world of daily fantasy sports sites has been largely unregulated since they first appeared. We say that’s semantics. “We drive interest and engagement with their games”.

The two incidents led Calvert to the conclusion that lower-level players like himself had no chance against the upper echelon of DFS winners armed with additional data and computer programs allowing them to quickly cycle through lineups, check player availability and identify those who didn’t fare well in the daily fantasy games.

“I make well over six figures doing this”, he said. “But the last year I was concerned about it was two years ago”, FanDuel’s Eccles said in September.

Not everybody is as bullish as industry insiders that the daily fantasy market will keep growing. None of these players are in the top tier at their position, but I think they’ll out-perform their price this week.

We would prefer if DraftKings, FanDuel and their ilk didn’t exist at all.

Gronk will be No. 1 every week as long as he’s healthy and he’s set for what should be a monster game against the Dallas Cowboys. Both companies have hired the same team of heavy hitting Tallahassee lobbyists in preparation for 2016’s legislative session.

Simon Perfitt, head of charity Rethink Gambling, said: “DraftKings’ USA operation spent over $100m in a single month on TV advertising”. The 1998 MVP became just the fourth player to rush for over 2,000 yards in a season. On October. 4, FanDuel revenue from GPPs was $1.8 million. He also won Super Bowls with the Bears and the 49ers. Draft a team now! Two Super Bowls, Five Pro Bowls, and an MVP Award later, he was worth the wait.