THE GOOD
This week there were a number of legal proceedings held that have not been reported in the national media or at least I could not find them. The Appellate Court in New York met on Monday and the industry is waiting for their decision on the attacks that took place in November and December. Again, FanDuel and DraftKings are operating in New York and unless the Appellate division determines that daily fantasy sports is gambling, they will continue to do so. This is always great news and needs to be said in every column.
At CES, the commissioners of the major leagues are telling the truth about daily fantasy sports. We will attack what happened there tomorrow, but the news coming out of there just afternoon today is best told in the tweets from Eric Fisher (right).
Here are some articles this week that are favorable to the fantasy sports industry or at least neutral.
- Eric Fisher on SBJ with news on the Commissioners from SBJ
- Wall Street Journal calls out Eric Schneiderman for having motives – The Wall Street Journal is validating what I was talking about in my last article as to the motives of the New York Attorney General.
- The Observer asking Schneiderman to focus on more important things.
- Fantasy sports players standing up for themselves using FantasySportsForAll.com in Texas.
- Legal Sports Report article on the California regulation bill.
Tell lawmakers you want to protect your fantasy sports.
THE BAD – JOURNALISM OR POLITICS
OK. As I had stated before, it is clear there are agendas out there and now a lot of politics. Let me also state that I have been a leader in the fantasy sports industry for a long time, including successes with building fantasy sports at CBS Sports and incubating Rotoworld.com. However, as a writer, I am not an investigative journalist. I write what I see, but I do make phone calls. I have found that people deeply involved will tell you exactly what they are doing on the phone and a back and forth can happen that cannot happen in email.
So yesterday when I saw the New York Times article, I planned to make that same phone call. Here is why I didn’t: The piece stated the obvious in showing problems that we have known since June that face the daily fantasy sports industry and are being addressed. So let’s save you from having to read it to by getting to its point:
- DFS is a game of skill. As a matter of fact, so skillful that the average sports fan has difficulty competing with the best players. As Peter Schoenke, Chairman of the Fantasy Sports Trade Association says: to get good at Golf or Tennis, you have to practice. This has facilitated almost every DFS operator to include beginner contests. By the way, that is why Fantasy Alarm has the DFS Playbook PRO to teach people how to play an incredibly difficult game better so they can become winners.
- Multi-Entry Tournaments are harder to win if you are not entering multiple entries. There is another side of this coin. There is less risk with your single entry and it is still fun to play and make the games more fun to watch. Also, FanDuel and DraftKings have made a huge effort in making a larger number of single entry tournaments easier to find for those who prefer them. This was included in the Massachussetts proposed regulations, so it is old news.
- Scripting has enabled the best players to enter more tournaments faster and easier. This is obvious and in order to combat this, the industry has to be smarter than the programmers who use Internet robotics to get passed things. This is challenging, but also included in the Massachussetts proposed regulations.
So why bring up old news? Why push only this agenda which is identical to the agenda of the New York Attorney General? Hmmm…Have you seen advertising from daily fantasy sports in the New York Times? Just saying that I use Occum’s Razor when looking for a reason for things, sometimes the most obvious is the reason. That reason is usually money, ego or vengeance.
AND THE UGLY
Well, the ugly is me. That means two things: what I see in the mirror and how I behaved a couple days ago. Most people who know me, know that I am passionate. Well, I let that overflow in Tuesday’s article and the subsequent tweet that I directed at Legal Sports Report. The article was an attempt to say that Legal Sports Report has covered daily fantasy sports fairly and that even they could get negative. Well, I was unsuccessful and then I went too far with my tweets. I want to publically apologize to Dustin Gouker and Chris Grove. They are friends of the industry and calling them out for being unnecessarily negative in a column is fair. However, not recognizing more clearly that this is not the norm from their site and they are fair, dedicated to the truth and keeping people up-to-date on the on-goings in daily fantasy sports was simply wrong. Keep up the good work, guys.
OK. Back to the fun that is fantasy sports. See you in a couple days.