Fantasy Football Sites Considered Gambling

Soon after the decision was made to consider daily fantasy sports gambling, with the Nevada Gaming Control Board calling for an immediate shut down of the activity until licensing was approved, the State Attorney General released the full opinion that caused officials to make the ruling.

A notice issued by the Gaming Control Board said the sites must stop offering their contests to Nevada residents immediately, and until they are granted a license.

Critics of daily fantasy sports sites have likened it to sports gambling, and while Nevada isn’t the first state to outlaw sites like DraftKings and FanDuel, as five states have already prohibited these sites from operating, according to USA Today, Nevada is the most influential as it is the only state with legal gambling.

In court papers, the customers accused the DraftKings and FanDuel sites of cheating, and argued they would never have played had they known employees with insider knowledge were playing on rival sites.

A spokesperson for DraftKings, another leading daily fantasy site, said, “We understand that the gaming industry is important to Nevada, and, for that reason, they are taking this exclusionary approach against the increasingly popular fantasy sports industry”.

Under current state laws all operators must obtain a license in order to operate a sports pool.

“This decision stymies innovation and ignores the fact that fantasy sports is a skill-based entertainment product loved and played by millions of sports fans”, FanDuel said.

Edinburgh-based FanDuel, one of the country’s fastest growing firms, has been urged by the New York attorney general’s office to disclose whether staff have used the company’s data to “gain a personal advantage”. Like most games, the competitor who earns the most points based on those players’ statistics wins. Nevada has been regulating these types of wagers “for decades”. However, if players were to go to Fanduel or Draftkings now, players would be able to play like nothing happened.

FILE – In this September 9, 2015 file photo, Devlin D’Zmura, a tending news manager at DraftKings, a daily fantasy sports company, works on his laptop at the company’s offices in Boston.

A Nebraska lawmaker who favors expanded gambling says he’s looking into how the state should address pay-to-play fantasy sports, which have exploded in popularity in recent years.

The announcement from Nevada comes on the heels of investigations from the U.S. Department of Justice and the FBI over the legality of the companies that operate daily fantasy sports. He said the board’s decision speaks for itself.

Instead Nevada considers any wagering on sports pools to be a form of gambling that requires a permit from the state, Burnett said; without that permit the fantasy companies can not offer their games to people in Nevada.

Both DraftKings and FanDuel announced their withdrawal from the Nevada market following Nevada’s C&D letter.

The Fantasy Sports Trade Association, an industry association comprised of many fantasy sites, has a charter that calls for members to segregate player funds, but it is self-enforcing and therefore depends on the good faith of the businesses themselves to comply, Dayanim said.