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Canadian online gambling operator Amaya Gaming has withdrawn its StarsDraft daily fantasy sports operation from all but four US states, citing regulatory developments.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…

F.B.I. Now Targeting Fantasy Sports Industry

The Federal Bureau of Investigation has begun an inquiry into the practices of booming daily fantasy sports websites after players of the games and lawmakers made allegations of predatory tactics and questioned the use of insider information, according to fantasy players who said they had been contacted by investigators. The F.B.I. began contacting several prominent competitors in the contests, the players said, shortly after an employee of DraftKings, one of the two most prominent daily fantasy companies, admitted to inadvertently releasing data before lineups for the start of the third week of N.F.L. games were locked in. The employee, a…

Fantasy Sports are gambling

Federal Trade Commission Could Investigate Fantasy Sites

United States Sen. Robert Menendez and Congressman Frank Pallone have asked the Federal Trade Commission to investigate daily fantasy sports operators who allowed employees with access to nonpublic information to compete on rival sites. “Allowing employees of fantasy sports websites with access to nonpublic information to participate in online fantasy games, even if the games are operated by other fantasy sports companies, could give those employees an advantage akin to insider trading,” Menendez and Pallone stated in an Oct. 6 letter to the FTC. “Therefore, we also ask the FTC to investigate whether this constitutes an ‘unfair or deceptive practice’…