If you’ve watched any sports network for more than three minutes in the past six months, without a doubt you have seen a commercial for either FanDuel or DraftKings, maybe even both within those three minutes. While both sites’ constant bombardment of advertisements are outright annoying for sports fans, they also should be looked at as gambling, since they revolve around betting money on how well certain players perform. The thousands of dollars put on each player adds additional pressure to players who already have enough pressure simply for playing a professional sports, some even bet on college athletes who don’t get paid themselves.
Pierre Garcon, wide receiver for the Washington Redskins, recently took the initiative by suing FanDuel for “trying to profit on plaintiff Garcon’s success, and that of other NFL athletes, without compensating them.” Garcon is suing on behalf of all NFL players. Unfortunately, DraftKings has a licensing agreement with the NFL Player’s Association, so they can’t be sued as well. This might mean the end of FanDuel in the NFL if they don’t make a similar licensing agreement.
Professional athletes aren’t the only ones whom the sites are benefiting from. They also use college athletes, specifically basketball and football. This opens up a whole new can of worms because college athletes, who aren’t being paid, are playing with thousands of dollars on their backs. The student athletes already rake in millions for their prospective colleges without any reward in return, and now they are raking in money for big corporations without compensation. It is surprising that college athletes haven’t filed a suit similar to Garcon against FanDuel and DraftKings, or at least complained about lack of pay.
The only reason that both sites haven’t been ruled gambling and taken out of circulation is because they found a loophole in gambling law. The law states that it is legal if the game “has an outcome that reflects the relative knowledge of the participants (but not chance).” Both Draftkings and FanDuel claim that their games are not games of chance, but instead “games of skill.”
No matter how you put it, this is clearly gambling. There is no guarantee that certain players will perform better than others, That means these sites run games of chance, which would be gambling. Joe Asher, CEO of the sports gambling company William Hill US put it this way: “Of course it’s sports betting. It doesn’t mean that it’s subject necessarily to the same laws. You’re risking money on something of an uncertain outcome, and to me that sounds like gambling.” Gambling is illegal for a reason, to avoid players intentionally playing bad or losing games in order to win bets, such as the famous Pete Rose scandal that cost him a spot in the Hall of Fame. The question now comes as to whether the law regarding fantasy sports should be changed. The law was created back in 2006 before the rise of FanDuel and DraftKings, so it may be out of date. A new law should be created specifically outlawing daily fantasy with cash involved to put an end to this once and for all.