New York’s attorney general is investigating Yahoo’s daily fantasy sports platform, adding the third-largest daily fantasy sports site to the office’s probe of the business.
Advertisement
Daily fantasy has exploded in popularity after both Boston-based DraftKings and New York-based FanDuel unleashed a flurry of on-air, online and billboard ads promoting the games to casual sports fans.
Yahoo does not comment on legal matters, a spokesperson said. A post from Yahoo says daily fantasy paid contests are legal and offered everywhere in the US except for Arizona, Florida, Iowa, Louisiana, Montana, Washington and Nevada.
The subpoena follows Schneiderman’s recent push to shut down daily sports fantasy groups in NY over concerns the groups are flaunting federal gambling statutes, unnamed sources confirmed to Reuters November 18.
Above: Ken Fuchs, Yahoo’s vice president of publisher products, announced the company’s new Daily Fantasy sports product at a San Francisco sports bar on July 8.
Yahoo and DraftKings are still operating in NY.
Glover Park and Sard were hired to battle Schneiderman, who demanded that the two companies hosting daily fantasy sports competitions stop taking bets from residents of his state, labeling these transactions as illegal gambling infractions, and not games of chance, according to NY state law.
Speaking to reporters after an event Wednesday in Rochester, Cuomo said he has no plans to weigh in on the legal questions surrounding DraftKings and FanDuel until the case brought by Schneiderman is decided.
For example, Schneiderman pointed to a DraftKings presentation to prospective investors that makes comparisons to poker and sports wagering.
The injunction requested in NY is the latest threat to the daily fantasy sports industry.
Advertisement
Daily fantasy games will generate about $2.6 billion this year in entry fees, an industry euphemism for wagers, growing 41% annually to an estimated $14.4 billion by 2020, according to Eilers Research in Anaheim.
