The Ins and Outs of Fantasy Sports: Daily Fantasy Sports, Gambling or Not?

Recent state legislation regulating fantasy sports contests may present a different type of threat to the nascent fantasy sports industry—the possibility that the U.S. Attorney General (or others) could invoke PASPA to enjoin the state law. This is the same law that prohibits states from legalizing traditional, single-game sports betting. Although PASPA has not yet surfaced as an obstacle to state legalization of DFS, it may emerge as an important issue as additional state legislative measures are introduced, particularly with a new U.S. Attorney General potentially taking a harder look at Internet gambling generally. Further, as more and more states begin passing laws legalizing daily fantasy sports contests, many have begun to question why some forms of sports gambling are allowed but not others. This chapter examines how PASPA could apply to state-sanctioned fantasy sports and provides an analytical framework for assessing the viability of such legislation under PASPA.

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Are daily fantasy sports gambling?

Journal of Sports Analytics ◽

10.3233/jsa-180240 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 5 (1) ◽

pp. 35-43 ◽

Cited By ~ 2

Author(s):

Todd Easton ◽

Sarah Newell

Keyword(s):

Fantasy Sports ◽

Sports Gambling ◽

Daily Fantasy Sports

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Daily fantasy sports and the law in the USA

The International Sports Law Journal ◽

10.1007/s40318-021-00192-0 ◽

2021 ◽

Author(s):

Maureen A. Weston

Keyword(s):

Social Issues ◽

Daily Basis ◽

Online Gambling ◽

Federal Legislation ◽

Fantasy Sports ◽

Product Lines ◽

Sports Gambling ◽

The Usa ◽

Daily Fantasy Sports ◽

Operating Company

AbstractThis chapter examines legal, regulatory, and social issues surrounding the phenomenon of the daily fantasy sports (DFS) industry in the USA. Traditional fantasy sports contests largely involved groups of family or friends creating their own respective “fantasy” teams of real professional athletes, whose actual games results over the course of an entire season determined the success of one’s fantasy team. Fantasy sports contests were not considered gambling on sports, and federal legislation exempts “fantasy sports” from prohibitions against online gambling. As the name implied, DFS is a different product, offering users who pay the DFS operating company to select their team roster on a daily basis, competitions can occur over a day or a week depending on the contest, and among thousands of users, few of whom are consistent winners in the contests. The DFS commercials and advertisements are again blaring the airwaves. Major DFS operators are expanding their product lines and are now fully immersed in online, mobile, and casino sports gambling in states where legal. The DFS and sports gaming market is booming; the technology, analytics, user sophistication, financial stakes, and the distinction between DFS and gambling are increasingly blurred. This chapter considers the legal, regulatory, and social issues arising from the expanding DFS and sport gaming business.

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Turning Fantasy into Regulatory Reality: A Comparative Approach to Daily Fantasy Sports Through Contracts

SSRN Electronic Journal ◽

10.2139/ssrn.2757152 ◽

2016 ◽

Author(s):

Patrick Anthony Feeney

Keyword(s):

Comparative Approach ◽

Fantasy Sports ◽

Daily Fantasy Sports

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Player Pricing Mechanisms and the Daily Fantasy Sport Chance Versus Skill Debate

International Journal of Sport Finance ◽

10.32731/ijsf/164.112021.04 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 16 (4) ◽

Author(s):

Jeremy Losak

Keyword(s):

The United States ◽

Necessary Condition ◽

Theoretical Discussion ◽

Fantasy Sports ◽

Fantasy Football ◽

Legal Implications ◽

Expected Performance ◽

Game Player ◽

Predominant Factor ◽

Daily Fantasy Sports

Differentiating and defining games of skill versus chance have major legal implications when classifying gambling, especially in relation to daily fantasy sports in the United States. This paper provides a theoretical discussion and introduces an empirical approach to analyzing game player pricing mechanisms. If game pricing mechanisms are fully efficient—player prices fully reflect the expected contributions from players—then that game is one of chance since there is no opportunity for skill to play a role in outcomes. This paper examines player prices from DraftKings’ daily fantasy football product. Empirical results show that there are strategies deriving from the pricing mechanism that can be incorporated by skilled participants to increase their expected performance and improve their chances of winning. This provides evidence that daily fantasy sports are skill-based—a necessary condition for skill to be a predominant factor in game outcomes as part of the legal debate.

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Optimising Daily Fantasy Sports Teams with Artificial Intelligence

International Journal of Computer Science in Sport ◽

10.2478/ijcss-2020-0008 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 19 (2) ◽

pp. 21-35

Author(s):

Ryan Beal ◽

Timothy J. Norman ◽

Sarvapali D. Ramchurn

Keyword(s):

Real World ◽

National Football League ◽

Mixed Integer ◽

Data Sets ◽

Fantasy Sports ◽

Real World Data ◽

Sports Teams ◽

Novel Approach ◽

Four Seasons ◽

Daily Fantasy Sports

AbstractThis paper outlines a novel approach to optimising teams for Daily Fantasy Sports (DFS) contests. To this end, we propose a number of new models and algorithms to solve the team formation problems posed by DFS. Specifically, we focus on the National Football League (NFL) and predict the performance of real-world players to form the optimal fantasy team using mixed-integer programming. We test our solutions using real-world data-sets from across four seasons (2014-2017). We highlight the advantage that can be gained from using our machine-based methods and show that our solutions outperform existing benchmarks, turning a profit in up to 81.3% of DFS game-weeks over a season.

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