Almost all of us sports geeks have been involved with fantasy sports. Even if you haven’t joined a fantasy league, you cannot have missed the ads involving fantasy sports. Because you can’t even watch TV anymore without one of these ads popping up. In fact, according to one analysis, a commercial by the two largest fantasy providers, DraftKings and FanDuel, airs once every 15 seconds somewhere in the television world.

However, while the daily fantasy sports seem to be a fast and easy way to earn some cash, the reports surrounding these companies are disturbing. So let’s talk about daily fantasy today, and lets start with the obvious premise daily fantasy it is based on: betting. Because according to a law that was written way back when, state-sponsored betting and federal-sponsored betting on sports was illegal. However, there was a loophole in the law for fantasy, and DraftKings and FanDuel took that loophole and blasted through it. And they have heavily invested themselves in leagues and media to protect their legality. For instance, FanDuel and DraftKings sponsors ESPN, CBS, FOX, and practically every other big name media out there. In fact, I think the only thing they haven’t sponsored is Carmel High School, and I assume they will get on that as soon as they see this post.

And it’s not just media, professional and otherwise, that is being sponsored, it’s the leagues too. MLB and NHL have equity in DraftKings, the NBA has equity in FanDuel, and while the NFL has no equity in either site (yet), 28 of the 32 NFL teams have equity in one of the 2 fantasy sites.

Regardless of their sponsorship, many of the lawmakers who originally wrote the law I previously mentioned, which was written in 1992, stated that daily fantasy was never meant to reach these types of powers. In fact, it should never have come into existence. Several states, including Nevada, have passed laws illegalizing daily fantasy sports. And while many states still allow daily fantasy, there are bills trying to illegalize it in many of the states, which of course DraftKings and FanDuel are lobbying to stop these bills.

In addition, daily fantasy, while attractive, has some hidden things. For instance, only 1% win anything larger than $1,000. The vast majority (90%) were losers. And although they claim “Anyone can win”, the vast majority of that 1% use complex algorithims to determine who to pick, which factors in the time of day, the weather, the stadium, the teams…basically everything about the game being played, taking “going overkill” to the extreme. Many of these 1% also picked up skills from playing poker in the World Series of Poker, which, incidentally, is sponsored by DraftKings!

And even now, the United States Congress is attempting to stop daily fantasy, with a House committee meeting that occurred on Wednesday. The full report has yet to be released, but the House hinted they will “reexamine” the laws written about fantasy sports.

I think it couldn’t be any more clearer. Daily fantasy is bad, they have gained too much power through too many loopholes that all need to be closed, and they bombard us with ads. In fact, I surmise in approximately 5 months, when I pick up my copy of the HiLite, there will be a big green and black ad on page 20 that advertises DraftKing’s site. Because, as previously mentioned, the only thing they haven’t sponsored is this school, and with CHS pretty much ready to break its deal with Nike, I assume DraftKings will quickly use their “foot-in-door” strategy to earn themselves a deal with CHS. We need to bring these daily fantasy companies to a grinding halt, or at least their ads need to be a lot more honest.
Catch you all next week.