Amaya Inc., a Canadian company which operates PokerStars as well as the StarsDraft fantasy site, said it would wait for the industry to be regulated before re-entering the market in those states.
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He said a plan announced this week by the industry’s trade group to police itself with an outside control board is positive but doesn’t go far enough.
The world of online gambling has been an ever-changing one, and recently it’s taken on a new face in daily fantasy leagues. He said his bill aims to provide the right balance of protections for fantasy sports players in Illinois.
“Secretary Harris is an independent expert of unimpeachable credibility who has dedicated his career to ensuring fairness and a level playing field”, said FSTA President Paul Charchian in a statement.
Nigel Eccles said he would support state regulations on daily fantasy similar to the recent legislation introduced in Illinois.
“We have always been committed to protecting our players and the industry as a whole, and we will continue to be”, Eccles said in a letter to FanDuel users. The move comes after the Nevada Gaming Control Board issued a “cease and desist” order two weeks ago to the daily fantasy sports sites, saying the activity was the definition of sports wagering under state law.
He noted that a Brooklyn Park man won $1 million October 22 playing on FanDuel.
Professional football and the NFL are more popular than ever these days and there’s no better proof than the dozens of websites devoted to fantasy football and the millions of people who play each week.
The five-member panel, which oversees casinos and horse racing, promised after the roughly hourlong discussion Thursday to quickly turn around a policy paper to help guide state lawmakers as they weigh whether daily fantasy sports are legal and whether they should be regulated.
Prompted by calls from state leaders to weigh in, the Gaming Commission is beginning public discussions on what direction Massachusetts might take. That would subject those fantasy sports sites to background checks and audits from the department.
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In 2006, Congress prohibited Internet gambling, making it illegal for banks or credit-card companies to process payments to online gambling operations. FanDuel and DraftKings insist they’re legal games of skill, not sports betting, and have fought efforts to classify them as gambling. DraftKings performed an internal investigation following the discovery of their employees’ winnings and concluded that Haskell did not have access to insider information previous to lineups being locked and that he placed his bet with the same knowledge as anybody else. Taylor said that qualified as a need for a few oversight.
