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| Is fantasy football a gambling ring? Image: Shutterstock |
Rising
in popularity ever since its inception in 2011, fantasy football now has
lawmakers asking—does it count as internet gambling?
The
billion-dollar fantasy football market includes dozens of daily and weekly
games that allow players to bet thousands or even tens of thousands of dollars,
prompting legal experts and lawmakers to suggest it’s time to review the 2006
Unlawful Internet Gambling Act.
Designed
primarily to curtail internet poker, the act specifically excused fantasy
football as a “skill-based proposition.”
Now,
however, lawmakers are concerned that fantasy football games, many of which
require a buy-in and are relatively unregulated, may very well constitute
gambling.
"It's
an easy argument with season-long games because you exercise a great deal of
skill in operating a team," said LasVegas attorney Tony Cabot, who has practiced gambling law for thirty years.
"You have to figure out who to draft, play, trade, and all those things to
have a successful season…you're betting on an outcome you can control."
Other
games, however, are not so clear cut, according to Cabot: they involve paying an entry fee and then choosing
which of two players will, for example, finish a certain day with the most
receiving yards. Not exactly a test of
skill.
And
so the controversy continues. Earlier in
August Yahoo, CBS, ESPN, and the NFL all launched
pay-to-enter fantasy football leagues in Kansas. The Kansas Gaming and Racing commission
responded by questioning the legality of these leagues, stating that “if a fantasy sports league has a buy-in (no
matter what it is called) … and gives a prize, then all three elements of an
illegal lottery are satisfied."
While
bigger fantasy football league creators such as FanDuel and DraftKings have
suffered under the debate and currently block participants in Arizona,
Louisana, Iowa, Montana, and Washington, smaller companies continue to run the
games with little to no interference to date.
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