Massachusetts’ approach is more restrained than that taken by NY state, whose attorney general on Tuesday sought a court injunction to shut down DraftKings and FanDuel, calling the games “plainly illegal”. MA Attorney General Maura Healy announced new rules for the industry earlier this week, including prohibitions on players under age 21 from participating and on games based on college sports.
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“I think anybody looking at this acknowledges it’s a form of gambling”.
“Daily fantasy sports is neither victimless nor harmless, and it is clear that DraftKings and FanDuel are the leaders of a massive, multi-billion-dollar scheme meant to evade the law and fleece sports fans across the country,”Schneiderman said in a statement”. New York, along with many others, are attempting to make the case that daily fantasy sports is gambling and therefore should be treated as such – which, unless the law of the land changes, means largely outlawing it like they do Blackjack, for example.
The Final Decision Combined with the state’s tough gambling laws and the impossibility of not classifying daily fantasy sports as a game of chance, the industry may be on the verge of significant contraction. “That only happens in games of skill where the player can not influence the outcome”.
“FanDuel and DraftKings operate illegal online sports betting businesses that accept wagers from persons across the nation”, the suit states.
The latest action clouds Yahoo’s fantasy sports operations amid a legal battle by the office of the state’s attorney general to shut down two other services, DraftKings and FanDuel. These are basically computer programs that help professional daily fantasy players gain an advantage.
Daily fantasy sports, a turbocharged version of the season-long game, have developed over the past decade.
Predominantly going off Schneiderman’s ruling that DFS isn’t protected through the UIGEA loophole that allowed for fantasy sports games when it was passed in 2006, Shkolnik opines that customers are unknowingly gambling when being told it’s skill-based.
“What we want is these companies to do the things necessary to protect players while letting them enjoy the sites, prevent underage players from playing and protect the money when the money is deposited into the escrow account”, he said.
Gambling in the state is prohibited under New York’s constitution.
“We appreciate that there will be a public notice and comment period to collect input from all relevant parties and FanDuel will submit our comments to the regulations in the next 60 days”. The lawyer compared daily fantasy sports with mahjong and video-game tournaments conducted with cash prizes, which he said were different from poker games because they involve random cards being dealt.
Cody Porlier of Greenfield said, “It doesn’t really bother me whether I win or not”.
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The MA government states that they were carefully monitoring the DFS industry from the beginning of 2015 and the proposal consists of suggestions that will mitigate the risks their study highlighted.
