NY State has made its ruling on whether daily fantasy sports sites are illegal.
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On Monday, both DraftKings and FanDuel filed for temporary restraining orders to prevent NY AG Eric Schneiderman from enforcing his cease & desist order, which takes effect on Tuesday.
DraftKings says it has 375,000 New Yorkers among about 2.5 million total players.
Other states are considering measures similar to New York’s to ban the contests.
Daily fantasy sports, a turbocharged version of the season-long game, have developed over the past decade.
Schneiderman spokesman Damien LaVera questioned why the two companies would hire lobbyists in NY if it felt its games were already legal there.
The two companies, meanwhile, have also filed their own lawsuits against Schneiderman and his NY Attorney General’s office, alleging that his actions created to curtail DFS activity in NY state are themselves illegal and unconstitutional.
“The idea that daily fantasy sites are using this law to claim they’re not gambling is not chutzpah, it’s horseshit”, said Oliver.
“The law favors maintaining the status quo pending decisions on the merits of the case”, said Jodi Balsam, an associate professor at Brooklyn Law School, who’s an expert on gaming law.
“They are so extreme that they led a MA court, just last Friday, to issue a temporary restraining order permitting a DraftKings payment processor to continue its services in the face of threats from the Attorney General”, the company stated.
Remember when “fantasy sports” involved an office pool into which everyone threw $20?
But in court papers, both companies argue the opposite.
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It’s easy to draw the parallel as to why a major sports network and entertainment conglomerate might want to invest into a product that would potentially bring in more viewers to match-ups that wouldn’t particularly have a larger audience. The companies typically return most of that money to players as prizes, keeping a fee of about 10 percent.
