Two major US daily fantasy sports companies are pledging to fight back in court against New York’s attorney general, who has ordered them to stop accepting bets in the state.
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Roughly 600,000 players, comprising 10% of FanDuel users, are in ny, Mr. Eccles said.
“We are going to use every avenue to stay open”, Eccles said. “But we look forward to working with Chairman Gray in 2016 to educate him on fantasy sports and the benefits that our innovative technology provides to sports-loving residents and the California economy”. NY customers can continue to play games that are free, she said.
Nevada officials, however, have made it clear that the degree of skill versus chance involved in daily fantasy sports does not matter to them. Citing New York law, Schneiderman told the companies that each wager placed with them “represents a wager on a “contest of chance” where winning or losing depends on numerous elements of chance to a ‘material degree.'” Similarly, the New York Times reported that, if challenged in court, the state of New York would have to prove chance to be a material factor.
“We believe this was a hasty and uninformed decision by the NY Attorney General”. The AG’s action follows an investigation by his office that found DraftKings and FanDuel to be in violation of ny state law against illegal gambling.
Under the proposal, Florida would create new regulations forcing companies like Draft-Kings and FanDuel to put in safeguards to prevent underage participants and bar employees of fantasy sports sites and their relatives from manipulating results, as they have been accused of doing in other states.
Schneiderman says an investigation into the sites show their contests are illegal gambling.
Mayor Bill de Blasio is marking the 14th anniversary of the crash of an airliner into a NY City neighborhood that killed 265 people, and this year he is on time.
They attracted unwanted attention when word broke in early October that an employee of DraftKings, Ethan Haskell, won $350,000 playing fantasy sports on FanDuel’s site. “Please acknowledge the receipt of this notice and confirm you are updating all location controls to block players from this jurisdiction”. These people requested anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly about the companies’ business relations.
DraftKings did not immediately respond to a request for comment. That’s not only cynical as hell, but a skill-luck distinction that has no bearing on New York’s law.
The tone Wednesday among financial companies was of uncertainty.
Jason Oxman, the chief executive officer of the Electronic Transactions Association, whose members include PayPal, Bank of America Corp., and Vantiv, said his group fielded numerous questions from its companies about Schneiderman’s order. While supporters have pointed to an exemption for fantasy sports carved out in the 2006 Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act, that legislation did not override state gambling prohibitions or other federal statutes, including the Illegal Gambling Business Act. “It’s a complicated jurisdictional analysis”. He’ll continue to play season-long fantasy football for fun after giving FanDuel a shot.
Schneiderman’s cease-and-desist letters to the nation’s two biggest online fantasy-sports-betting Web sites – FanDuel and DraftKings – sparked a deluge of outrage within hours.
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The pair still live in the Scottish capital, although the site’s headquarters are in NY.
