Daily Fantasy Sports and PASPA

Author(s):  
Daniel L. Wallach

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.

Author(s):  
Jeffrey Standen

The law of sports wagering in the United States reflects the exceptionalism of sports. Although limitations on gambling in general have undergone significant liberalization in recent decades, sports wagering remains subject to a complex interplay among federal and state prohibitions. This exceptionalism stems from the notion that sports contests would be ineluctably corrupted by betting, potentially giving contestants unduly large investments in the outcome, or in shaping the magnitude of the victory. Despite this continuing antipathy toward sports betting as a matter of formal legality, recent legal developments have unwittingly created a burgeoning industry in sports betting, which industry has created significant instability in the general prohibition. Specifically, the rise of daily fantasy sports contests, which can feature contests that appear remarkably similar to single-game bets on the outcome of a game, has both evidenced the domestic appetite for sports wagering, and has pushed against the boundaries set by the anti-gambling prohibitions. The legality of daily fantasy sports is highly debatable, and calls into question the very nature of a sports bet as a game of chance or skill, and whether or not fantasy play presents a substantially different set of characteristics. Whatever the legal outcome, strong arguments exist that suggest that fantasy play would not give rise to the concerns that animated the general prohibition on sports wagering.


2018 ◽  
Vol 28 (1) ◽  
pp. 39-62
Author(s):  
Alicia Jessop

The popularity of daily fantasy sports contests has risen exponentially as daily fantasy sports providers have raised hundreds of millions of dollars in seed funding from major sport industry and media stakeholders. Amongst this industry rise, concerns over whether the industry’s consumer protection mechanisms are stringent enough have arisen. In response, individual states executed varied approaches to regulating the industry within their borders. Some have imposed complete bans, while few allow the industry to widely operate and others have imposed significant regulations. States’ responses to the daily fantasy sports industry are akin to state legislators’ regulation of the securities industry in the 20th century. This paper analyzes state and federal regulations imposed on the securities industry in the 20th century to provide an argument as to why federal regulation of the daily fantasy sports industry is necessary.


2019 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 35-43 ◽  
Author(s):  
Todd Easton ◽  
Sarah Newell

Author(s):  
Maureen A. Weston

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.


2021 ◽  
pp. 152700252110369
Author(s):  
Ege Can ◽  
Mark W. Nichols

In May 2018, the Supreme Court overturned the Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act, thereby allowing all states to offer sports betting. Prior to this, Nevada was the only state with unrestricted sports betting. Using sports betting data from Nevada, we estimate long-run and short-run income elasticities to determine the growth and volatility of sports betting as a tax base. Sports gambling grows at a similar rate as state income and is stable and insensitive to short-run shocks to income. However, the amount of money kept by casinos, and hence the state, is small compared to other traditional tax bases.


2021 ◽  
Vol 16 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
Jeremy Losak

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.


2021 ◽  
Vol 66 (05) ◽  
pp. 109-113
Author(s):  
Hilal Mehti oğlu Abbasov ◽  

Athletes are not roulette chips, but sports gambling treats them as such. If the dangers of state sponsored sports betting are not confronted, the character of sports and youngsters’ view of them could be seriously threatened… just as legalizing drugs would lead to increased drug addiction, legalizing sports gambling would aggravate the problems associated with gambling. As a society, we cannot afford this result, and… legalizing sports gambling would encourage young people to participate in sports to win money. They would no longer love the game for the purity of the experience. Key words: major manipulations, harmful aspects, existing problems, legalizing sports gambling, ethics of sports


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