Don't let the headline fool you. It's not really sports betting. By definition it's still fantasy sports and according to the US Government, it's 100% legal.
Intrigued? You should be. The fantasy football industry has spawned several niches including fantasy player insurance (http://fantasysportsinsurance.com), fantasy arbitrators (http://www.sportsjudge.com) and, of course, for the league winners fantasy trophies (http://theultimatetrophy.com).
When UIEGA was passed in September '06 it was clear that the US government saw fantasy sports as contests (or games) of skill not luck. As long as fantasy contests stay within the clearly marked parameters they are 100% legal even when played with cash entry fees and awarding cash prizes to winners.
It's at sites like 365fantasysports.com where the 'sports betting' collides head-on with the fantasy world, if only on the surface. Every day contests are made available for players to enter with a set buy-in and a pre-determined payout. For example, a player may select a 2 team contest where the buy in is $22. The winner would collect $40. The same 10% "commission" or "fee" that sports bettors are oh so familiar with is mirrored in these contests as well.
You may be scratching your head at this point as you ponder how you can possibly get everyone together every day to draft a roster and wouldn't that get just a little bit tedious after a while? Sure, draft night is undoubtedly one of the best nights of the year and having a couple of them every late summer is fun but I wouldn't want to do it every night.
Fear not having to wait for everyone to get together to select your roster. At 365fantasysports.com you can draft your team whenever you wish. Once you select a contest you may begin choosing your players immediately. It's possible that you and your competitors may have some players in common, but, the likelihood of having identical rosters is very slim.
Founder of 365FantasySports.com Neil Odze had this to say, "We wanted to build a site with contests that would require very little time for our players to enter and select their rosters. One of the only complaints about traditional fantasy sports is that it takes up too much time. You can be in and done with one of our contests in just a few minutes."
The other factor that is very appealing about "daily" fantasy vs traditional fantasy is the payouts. Odze added, "Winnings get transferred to our contestants accounts every day as opposed to at the end of the season. That's why it looks and feels like sports betting even though by legal definition its not."
Daily fantasy contests will appeal to a very wide range of participants from fantasy experts and newbies to the gambling type who enjoy hitting the sports books in Vegas. "We even have a decent number of poker players on the site", said Odze, "I think they find our contest lobby to be very similar to what they see on many of the online poker sites."
With 30 million people in the US participating in some form of fantasy sports combined with the "microwave", "I-want-it-now" lifestyle that we've all grown to love, there's little doubt that the daily fantasy marketplace will be thriving sooner rather than later.
Odze concluded with the fact that, "Most traditional fantasy participants don't know that daily fantasy contests even exist. But from what we've seen from the contestants that have found us so far, once they discover it, they really like it."
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Great article. Well written and well said.
ReplyDeleteSuch a great site.
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