Judge rules against DraftKings, FanDuel, upholds daily fantasy ban in NY

The report comes as the debate about whether daily fantasy sports games like DraftKings and FanDuel fall into the gambling category, and the two companies prepare for court battles.

Schneiderman last week demanded in a “cease-and-desist” letter that the sites quit operating in the Empire State because he says they’re illegal gambling operations, a charge they vehemently deny. As for DraftKings itself, it can’t be considered a bookmaker, the filing argues, because the company is a third party that doesn’t make more or less with any action. As anyone with a TV knows, those days are long gone-daily fantasy games like DraftKings and FanDuel now dominate.

After taking office in 2011, the former state senator and Harvard Law School graduate became a key figure in dealing with the fallout from the 2007-08 mortgage meltdown.

FanDuel, based in New York, said on its website Friday that it would stop allowing new deposits from New York and will limit access to New York customers while the company pursues “the opportunity to be heard in court”. He has unleashed an irresponsible, irrational, and illegal campaign to destroy a legitimate industry, intending to deprive hundreds of thousands of New Yorkers of the use and enjoyment of these services.

Fantasy sports has been a popular US pastime for years, but daily contests, where winners and losers are decided in one night, rather than over the course of a season, have exploded in popularity recently.

The world’s largest private-sector coal company, Peabody Energy, agreed to revise shareholder disclosures after Schneiderman’s investigators said Peabody had privately projected that potential carbon-cutting regulations could seriously lower sales, but publicly claimed it couldn’t predict such risks. The day before that, a judge in NY could give DraftKings and FanDuel something for which to be truly thankful. The law was created to provide a check on online gambling, but left fantasy sports alone for the most part. The company noted that it has partnerships with Fox Sports, Major League Baseball, the National Hockey League, Major League Soccer, and the owners of the New England Patriots, Dallas Cowboys, NY Knicks, New York Rangers, and Los Angeles Dodgers. DraftKings and FanDuel promptly asked the state Supreme Court to nullify the order and declare the games legal.

All told, DraftKings’ GPPs took in almost $2.4m more than they paid out for an effective margin of 11.5% in Week 10, while FanDuel’s margin (which includes cash games in addition to GPP) came to 10%. Of course the companies want us to think it’s not.

In the coverage of the story, much of the debate has centered on the question: Are daily fantasy sports gambling or not?