Remember, it’s not whether you win or lose but whether you covered the spread.
Untoward, insider dealings in a completely unregulated, gray-area, half-understood industry? Why, I’m shocked, I tell you, shocked! At least the allegations of self-dealing within DraftKings and FanDuel might explain the preposterously large amount of winnings claimed by some of the Joe Schmoe characters who pop up in those ubiquitous TV commercials. One DraftKings employee racked up $350,000 from FanDuel after “inadvertently releasing data before the start of the third week of N.F.L. games,” according to the New York Times. We’ve come a long way from the weekly football pool in the company office.
Both FanDuel and DraftKings assure us that their games are on the square but, with the industry shrouded in secrecy, how can we be sure? There’s one way: Allow the casino industry to participate, which would bring regulatory transparency (and, yes, lots of money) to the table. Maybe that way we won’t have to read that “A spokesman for DraftKings acknowledged that employees of both companies had won big jackpots playing at other daily fantasy sites” or that both companies had barred their employees from participating in this supposedly incorruptible endeavor.
Having squeezed through a loophole in the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act of 2006, DraftKings and FanDuel have subsequently taken a battering ram to it, flaunting their ability to operate outside the law. As gaming attorney Daniel Wallach says, “It could imperil this nascent industry unless real, immediate and meaningful safeguards are put in place. If the industry is unwilling to undertake these reforms voluntarily, it will be imposed on them involuntarily as part of a regulatory framework.”
DraftKings is trying to paper over the information leak as an innocent mistake (and pay no attention to the $350K jackpot behind the curtain). The tendency of such companies to draw employees from the ranks of active fantasy players also raises questions of probity. This scandal-in-the-making is egg on the faces of major-league sports, who have all recently hopped in bed with daily fantasy sports with the glee of a virgin bride on her wedding night.
NFL team owners Robert Kraft and Jerry Jones have been so horny, in fact, that they’ve invested in DraftKings personally. (Do they wager on their own teams, I wonder?) DFS wants to police itself but any repetition of the Ethan Haskell scandal will prove they can’t.
