If you’ve turned on your television at all over the past two weeks, odds are you’ve been bombarded by advertisements from DraftKings or FanDuel about playing “one-day fantasy sports where you can win real money.” It seems like every other commercial features the same thirty-something white guy explaining how he turned pocket change into hundreds of thousands of dollars using something like this sportsbook, but since online sports gambling is illegal in the US, how exactly are these sites allowed to operate? According to Terry Kelley, a special agent with the Minnesota Department of Public Safety’s Alcohol and Gambling Enforcement, the law views gambling on a fantasy team and gambling on a real NFL team in a different light. “There’s a distinguishing act between gambling and fantasy sports,” said Kelley. “The distinguishing fact is that fantasy sports such as fantasy football are two teams playing each other that don’t exist.”
Specific Exclusion
Although sports betting is legal over in Europe, (if you’re visiting from the States, you could check out mobile wins for any bets!) it has yet to catch on legally here in the US, outside of Las Vegas. When Congress was debating the legality of online gambling back in 2006, they ruled that sports betting was a game of chance, therefore it was classified as gambling. But daily fantasy sports were given a different classification – a game of skill – which meant that it was not perceived as gambling under the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act, which states: “All winning outcomes reflect the relative knowledge and skill of the participants and are determined predominantly by accumulated statistical results of the performance of individuals in multiple real-world sporting or other events.” Also, even though it doesn’t expressly say it, wording in the Act appears to suggest that this type of gambling is legal because it would be much harder for an official or player to rig games. “No winning outcomes is based on the score, point-spread, or any performance or performances of any single real world team or any combination of such teams.” Minnesota is one of 45 states where it is legal to wager money on games of skill, but Arizona, Iowa, Louisiana, Montana and Washington have stricter regulations, meaning residents in those states cannot win money on DraftKings or FanDuel. It’s likely that more states will follow suit, as there have been conversations among legislators and congressmen about reviewing the legality of Daily Fantasy Sports on local and national levels.
