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Fantasy Sports, Real Problems

By Rebekah Page-Gourley posted 05-02-2016 07:15

  

Should we consider fantasy sports to be games of skill or just a modern take on gambling?

I know a lot of fantasy sports devotees who would argue that they’ve got serious chops, developed over time. (Probably too much time, quite frankly.) They would say they consistently beat the competition by using their sports knowledge to make careful, informed choices about what players to put in their lineup and what players to dump. They may not win them all, but hey, neither do the pros.

But for every “skilled” fantasy player who wins big, isn’t there one who gets burned? And, more to the point, isn’t there always that unskilled guy who just gets lucky? (I mean the guy who knows nothing about sports but still waltzes into the league on a whim and annoys everyone with his arbitrary-yet-brilliant choices. And don’t even get me started on the somewhat related issue of my friends’ cats, Theo and Mimi. The kitties' March Madness bracket once beat out the competition through the highly scientific method of choosing cat mascots over birds and dogs, and birds over dogs.)

These questions are part of a nationwide debate thanks to so-called “one-day fantasy sports” websites like FanDuel and DraftKings. Such sites claim to provide “a new way to play fantasy—fan vs. fan in a test of sports knowledge and fantasy knowhow.” The argument by consumer advocates like New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman is that the games “cause the same kinds of social and economic harm as other forms of illegal gambling” and are intended to “evade the law and fleece sports fans.” On the flip side, the sites and their supporters contend that daily fantasy sports players engage in “skill-based contests that bring them closer to the sports that they love.”

Only a few states officially consider daily fantasy sports to be illegal gambling. A number of states are now considering legislation that would regulate these daily fantasy sports sites, and others are seeking to protect them by specifically exempting them from gambling laws. Virginia is one of the few states to have already imposed state-led oversight of the daily fantasy sports industry. In New York, Schneiderman ordered the sites to stop accepting bets, and, after initially fighting the order, Fan Duel and DraftKings both agreed not to take any payments in the state until a September appellate court hearing (or, potentially, the passage of determinative legislation). Both sites also recently agreed, under pressure from the NCAA, to “indefinitely suspend college sports contests in all states” after the 2016 Final Four games.

Here in Michigan, Gaming Control Board officials are “studying whether the websites violate state laws that prohibit gambling outside of licensed casinos, horse tracks and charity gaming events.” In the meantime, there’s also pending legislation that would exempt daily fantasy sports from Michigan’s gambling law.

So, are you thinking this issue will get tied up with a neat little bow anytime soon? I wouldn’t bet on it.

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