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

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Patrick Anthony Feeney
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.


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.


2020 ◽  
Vol 19 (2) ◽  
pp. 21-35
Author(s):  
Ryan Beal ◽  
Timothy J. Norman ◽  
Sarvapali D. Ramchurn

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.


2015 ◽  
Vol 19 (5) ◽  
pp. 346-349 ◽  
Author(s):  
I. Nelson Rose

2013 ◽  
Vol 17 (8) ◽  
pp. 553-554 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sue Schneider

2020 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
pp. 45-60
Author(s):  
Rodney Paul ◽  
Andrew Weinbach ◽  
Jeremy Losak

The market for daily fantasy sports for the NBA is examined with respect to efficiency when pricing player salaries for the games.  Simple factors such as home court advantage, rest, and opponent are shown to significantly effect performance beyond posted salaries in the respective markets.  In addition, a “hot hand” effect is found in that players that exceed expectations in previous games are shown to outperform salary-based expectations in the next contest.  These factors yield a rejection of market efficiency as it relates to salaries in the marketplace.  Legal ramifications for these contests as games of skill are examined.


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.


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