Sheldon Adelson Now Opposes Fantasy Sports

Adelson AssThis week, the first week of a new NFL season, is the biggest of the year for companies like DraftKings and FanDuel, the platforms that offer a “daily” alternative to traditional “season-long” fantasy sports. This week is when new users sign up in droves.

But this season, there are more states where users can’t play DraftKings or FanDuel than there were one year ago. Amid widespread legal scrutiny after the two private tech startups flooded airwaves with $200 million worth of advertising, a few new states became unfriendly. (See where every state now stands on daily fantasy sports.)

One of those states was Nevada, where the Nevada Gaming Control Board decided that daily fantasy sports contests constitute gambling. Nevada did not rule daily fantasy sports illegal, just that the companies must apply for gambling licenses to continue doing business there. And that is something the companies are unlikely to ever do. “We have found that [an entry in a daily fantasy sports contest] is a wager,” Nevada Gaming Control Board chairman A.G. Burnett told ESPN, “and obviously, it’s on a sporting event, and DFS companies are in the business of accepting those wagers.”

Sheldon Adelson, CEO of Las Vegas Sands (LVS), is one of the most powerful business people in Nevada. Adelson spoke exclusively to Yahoo Finance recently about his plan to build a new $1.9 billion football stadium and bring the Oakland Raiders to Las Vegas, and in that interview, the subject of daily fantasy sports came up.

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