N.J. Congressman calls for hearings on explosive fantasy sports growth, prize money

Lots of ways to play
Lots of ways to play

If you’ve recently noticed the incessant advertisements for fantasy sports websites with cash prizes and wondered, “Why isn’t this gambling?” you aren’t alone. New Jersey Congressman Frank Pallone is wondering, too, and he’s called for Congressional hearings on the matter.

Online gambling is illegal. Gambling on sporting events is illegal (except in some places). So why isn’t “gambling*” online about athletes in sporting events illegal? Well, it’s complicated. In what’s known as the fantasy sports carve-out, betting* money on individual performances and how they might interplay with each other to win a prize is not illegal. And because we’re talking about a game of skill, not pure change, and the prize money isn’t directly related to the entry fee (we’re not talking about odds here), fantasy sports with cash prizes aren’t considered gambling, or sports betting. At least, that’s the prevailing legal argument at the moment. When it comes to anything relating to money, it is always best to do your research, just so you know what you are getting yourself in to. If you want to be more like Vegas Dave and have success in picking winners the majority of the time, it may be in your best interest to look into sites like https://TheVegasDave.com to get a better understanding of what this industry involves, considering there are quite a few rules about betting. Because of this, there is now betting software for bookies that may be able to help them follow the rules in regards to running a betting organization.

Fantasy sports are, however, really big money now. As in Draft Kings logos plastered all over the Fox Sports anchor desk big money (Fox is an investor). As in Fan Duel’s $275 million round of investor funding it announced this summer. (NBC is an investor. So are several pro sports leagues).

Word torture aside, we should all stop pretending that gambling on sporting events is illegal in America. I’ve always hated the faux puritanical relationship America has with gambling. It’s illegal unless the state does it and calls it a lottery, for example. When I lived in Missouri, gambling wasn’t legal, unless you were on water in a riverboat, when it was legal. So if we all agree sports gambling and online gambling is legal, fine. But this is one of those times that we really need to make up the rules before we play the game, not after a bunch of people get really hurt.

“The interplay between .. federal laws has made the legal landscape murky and public policy unclear,” Pallone warns. “Making them ripe for Congressional review.”

The major sports leagues are firmly against sports betting. They recently ganged up on the state of New Jersey to stop a plan to allow in-person sports betting at state casinos.

But they have embraced fantasy sports….well, the law seems to say it’s not gambling, and the ads sure don’t call it gambling, so I’ll keep calling it…”gambling*” then. Here we go: 16 NBA teams, and 27 MLB teams get sponsorship money from fantasy operators; 21 NFL teams have some kind of fantasy sponsorship. Some teams have directly invested in fantasy. Lots of players have relationships with operators. On the other hand, baseball and hockey leagues forbid their players from participating in fantasy leagues; the NFL thinks it’s great that its players play. The NBA is still trying to figure that out.

Meanwhile, the leagues also benefit from heightened interest in their also-ran games, of course — you know that’s the only reason you might care about that Rockies-Braves baseball clash.

“Professional sports deep involvement with daily fantasy sports leaves many questioning whether fantasy sports are distinguishable from sports better and other forms of gambling,” Parrone writes.

No accusations of wrongdoing here. I haven’t heard from a single consumer saying they feel cheated by any of these companies or that anyone feels victimized, though if you don’t think this will lead to more addictive behavior by some folks, you are being intentionally blind. But what we have here is a gold rush full of entangling alliances fueled by money and potentially addictive behavior, and we are doing it it while painfully twisting the English language.

People spend money on these sites because they can win more money, and that’s gambling. Let’s call it that. Let’s make sure who owns what is transparent. Let’s ensure our games have integrity. Let’s have aggressive, open discussion about what’s going on. Let’s not back our way into sports betting pretending we’re not.


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About Bob Sullivan 1640 Articles
BOB SULLIVAN is a veteran journalist and the author of four books, including the 2008 New York Times Best-Seller, Gotcha Capitalism, and the 2010 New York Times Best Seller, Stop Getting Ripped Off! His latest, The Plateau Effect, was published in 2013, and as a paperback, called Getting Unstuck in 2014. He has won the Society of Professional Journalists prestigious Public Service award, a Peabody award, and The Consumer Federation of America Betty Furness award, and been given Consumer Action’s Consumer Excellence Award.

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