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Fantasy Sports

By Alexander U.

If an individual watches any sort of professional sport on television, he or she cannot have missed the daily fantasy advertisements. At one point, daily fantasy companies aired an advertisement on national television every ninety seconds. Daily fantasy can be addictive due to the small chance of winning the jackpot. However, the argument of chance has raised the question: is daily fantasy gambling?

Before daily fantasy existed, the only option for entertainment were the original fantasy sports. Fantasy sports are a season-long game in which you put around twenty dollars into a pot, and you and your friends pick imaginary teams of players and compete to see who will emerge victorious, winning all the money. Daily fantasy, however, allows a person to go online, pay an entry fee ranging from from twenty-five cents to thousands of dollars, and compete against complete strangers for a week or a day. As a result, DraftKings and FanDuel have evolved into multi-billion dollar companies. Many sports now have partnerships in daily fantasy including the NBA, the MLB and twenty eight out of the thirty-two NFL teams have some sort of relationship with the companies. However, since the emergence of fantasy sports advertisement has caused a suspicion among people if daily fantasy is gambling or not.

Personally, I believe it is gambling. It follows the basic rules of gambling: that is, you pay to enter and win money if victorious, and if defeated, the money entered into the game is lost to another individual. On top of it all, 91% of the profits are won by 1.3% of daily fantasy players, meaning 85% of players are losers. Due to this, DraftKings and FanDuel continuously try to shy away from the word “gambling” when speaking of their product. On the DraftKings website, the company advertises the first reason why you should play DraftKings it is “100% legal.” Not only that, but in the United Kingdom, DraftKings received a gambling license. To receive gambling licenses and avoid being shut down, the companies continually reference to the UIGEA law. The law stands for “Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act,” and it was designed to hunt down illegal gambling on the internet. However, the law exempted fantasy sports as a small exception. The law, however, was protecting the original fantasy sports, not daily fantasy. But the two companies continue to hide behind the bill constantly stating it also protects their companies from being considered gambling.

If I am a supporter of daily fantasy being considered gambling, who does not? Supporters of daily fantasy do not have much evidence to consider it a legal game. The supporters usually resort to the same argument: many people consider daily fantasy as a game of skill rather than a game of chance. In some ways, the supporters are correct. An individual can test their knowledge of sports and try to win big. However, the top 1.3% of players that gain most of the profits are essential mathematicians that have created advanced algorithms to see which players will most likely perform the best. Whether the people use the argument as an actual defense or use it just to prevent daily fantasy from being considered gambling is anyone’s guess.

I still support the concept that daily fantasy is considered gambling. From the basic gambling format, to the fact that 85% of players are losers, there is little room for defense. Also, is it any wonder that the world series of poker is sponsored by DraftKings?

© 2016 Alexander U. All rights reserved.

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