DraftKings, a leading fantasy sports company, offers a new daily fantasy sports game allowing users to home in on a single NFL playoff game. The new game has, however, left a number of gambling experts wondering if the contest puts the industry closer to the territory of sports betting that currently remains illegal in most of the United States.
The “Showdown” variant allows users to choose six athletes from two teams playing against each other in a real-life football game, racking up fantasy points that are based on states such as touchdowns, receptions and yards passing, rushing or receiving. Users playing “Showdown” this weekend can, therefore, wager on performances in the Jaguars-Steelers game on Sunday without needing to wait for the Saints-Vikings game to play out a couple of hours later.
The 2006 federal law that banned online gambling but resulted in daily fantasy sports requires daily fantasy contests to be based on the performance of athletes in “multiple real-world” sporting events – not just single games which leads some advocates to question how DraftKings and regulators operate.
Keith Whyte, the Executive Director of the National Council of Problem Gambling, commented that this new game continues the industry trend of trying to get as close as possible to single game betting.
Whyte went on to say that the games “further blur the largely fictional line between daily fantasy sports and sports betting”.
According to DraftKings, the federal law – the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act – only applies if there is an underlying violation of state gambling statutes first and that so far, no state has objected to the competition.
