Officials Order Fantasy Sports Sites to Shut Down in Nevada
The accusations against Fan Duel and Draft Lings sound damning but closer scrutiny leads me to believe that there's a lot more smoke than there is fire. The involved parties never bet against the published data, as has happened on Wall Street, though it is not clear whether employees were allowed to participate themselves with access to information that was not publicly available. Investigations are ongoing but Fantasy Sports companies would do well to look deeply at their culture to see how, if at all, they can self-regulate.
Regardless, Nevada has suddenly decided to ask for gaming licenses from the two companies and any others like it.
from the AP article:
"DraftKings and FanDuel — sites that have insisted they aren't gambling and have promised to make millionaires out of sports fans — both pulled out of Nevada by Thursday evening.
That day's decision from the Nevada Gaming Control Board allows for daily fantasy sports in the state as long as the operator has or gets a gambling license. No one operating a daily fantasy site has one.
"If you're licensed in Nevada, you're good to go," said A.G. Burnett, chief of the state's Gaming Control Board. That includes traditional sports books where gamblers generally wager on the outcome of a given game.
The decision comes amid growing backlash by regulators and investigators, including New York's attorney general, after it was revealed employees often played on competing sites, raising questions about possible insider information being used to win."
One thing doesn't seem to have anything to do with the other.
A decade ago, Nevada's gaming lobby successfully shut down the online gambling businesses of the day by getting Congress to ban the practice.
The current Fantasy Sports betting system is legal due to the fact that the preponderance of data about the sports, the players and other factors makes Fantasy a game of skill, rather than chance. Regardless, Nevada is having none of that.
Rather than embrace the mobile revolution and offer compelling products (or use their tremendous resources to acquire some), it seems that the establishment believes that if you want to gamble, you'd better walk into a casino. And you'd better turn off your phone.