FanDuel CEO Warns: Expect More Laws and No IPO

After spending the last two months promising to make you rich, the chief executive of FanDuel admits his daily fantasy sports site may have gone a bit overboard.  “We definitely got creative burnout pretty darn quickly,” said Nigel Eccles in an wide-ranging interview with Bloomberg on Tuesday, in which he also touched on regulation, taking the company public, and the potential for a merger with competitor DraftKings. “People, when they saw the ad for the 87th time, they thought, I’m sick of this,” he said. The ad blitz was more than annoying. It was expensive — FanDuel has spent more than $100…

Fantasy Sports are gambling

Latest Fallout from Fantasy Sports Debacle

The dominoes keep tumbling for the Fantasy Sports industry, after a DraftKings employee used “inside information” to win over $300,000 in one week. Investigations have been initiated by the FBI and Federal Trade Commission, plus Nevada has issued a Cease and Desist for DFS operators in the state. Now, here’s the latest: The American Gaming Association Chimes in: On the topic of daily fantasy sports, the AGA Board of Directors also made clear that the industry seeks legal clarity and adequate consumer protections. Further, if daily fantasy sports is a legal activity, the casino gaming industry should have the opportunity…

New Jersey May Regulate Fantasy Sports Like Gambling

A New Jersey daily fantasy sports bill that a state senator plans to introduced is the strictest attempt to regulate the DFS industry. “We have a draft of a bill that we are circulating to a variety of people, the Division of Gaming Enforcement, the Casino Control Commission, other legislators, as well as people in the fantasy sports industry, to take a look at what might be appropriate for New Jersey to do,” state Senator Jim Whelan told Legal Sports Report in an interview on Wednesday. “Other states obviously are looking at this; we’re not talking about doing anything to ban it or to make it…

Fantasy Sports Are Gambling Says Nevada Board

Well this is interesting. The friendly folk regulating casinos Nevada say fantasy sports are gambling. At least for now. Anyone who has watched professional football this season has seen the ubiquitous advertising and promotion for pay-to-play daily fantasy sports sites such as DraftKings and FanDuel. On October 15th, 2015, the Nevada Gaming Control Board issued a notice in which they concluded that fantasy sports are gambling under state law. The Board ordered all unlicensed fantasy sports operators to “cease and desist” immediately, and until the requisite gaming approvals are obtained, or until applicable gaming laws are changed by the Nevada…

FBI Investigation of Fantasy Sports May Freeze Player Cash

On April 15, 2011, thousands of Americans who played online poker woke to find three popular websites shut down by the FBI and millions of dollars in players’ accounts frozen. The online poker industry survived its “Black Friday,” as the day became known, as the Obama administration declared online gaming legal later that year in states that approved it. But the aftermath should serve as a looming worst-case scenario to the millions of Americans who play daily fantasy sports, legal experts say, as many of those players who had money saved in online poker accounts had to wait years before…

Amaya Withdraws Fantasy Sports Site from Most U.S. Markets

Canadian online gambling operator Amaya Gaming has withdrawn its StarsDraft daily fantasy sports operation from all but four US states, citing regulatory developments. On Monday, Amaya issued a statement saying StarsDraft would restrict its real-money DFS contests to US customers located in New Jersey, Massachusetts, Kansas and Maryland, the four states Amaya says have “favorable existing daily fantasy sports guidance.” The move follows StarsDraft’s recent exits from both Florida and Nevada, which were prompted by a federal grand jury investigation and state regulators declaring that DFS operators needed gambling licenses, respectively. Amaya says the exit wouldn’t have a negative financial…