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The Coat of Arms

The Student News Site of Menlo School

The Coat of Arms

The Student News Site of Menlo School

The Coat of Arms

Is it time to regulate fantasy sports?

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A scandal involving two daily fantasy football sites calls into question the morality of fantasy sports. Photo from DraftKings.com

Michael Shames | Print Editor

Fake football– the concept seems pretty simple. Pick football players that you think will do well and leave the other football players to fellow fantasy participants. The business has given way to new job positions and new sports content in well-regarded newspapers and sports websites. You can’t get through a set of commercials on ESPN without seeing an advertisement for either DraftKings or FanDuel (the two major daily fantasy sites). But should we let money, especially in very large sums, get involved?

I am a victim of the industry, playing fantasy football in a league with my friends for a very small amount of money. I guess I do it because of its fun simplicity. I’m a casual football fan, and if I have some sort of stock in a given game, that game is going to be more interesting to me than if I was watching it for fun. For example, say that I have Vikings running back Adrian Peterson on my team. The Vikings aren’t a particular exciting team to watch, and unless they are playing the 49ers, I probably am not going to be interested in the game. However, now that I have someone to root for in the game (ie. Peterson), I am going to watch it.

For this reason, fantasy football can be considered as a positive for the NFL, as viewership of games has skyrocketed. I understand the viewpoint shared by many in the business of real football that the business of fantasy football is ruining the sport, as fans are rooting for individual players rather than whole teams. Is that bad? Should I just be rooting for one team in every game, even if it’s the Vikings against the Dolphins? No, and I believe it is possible to both have a favorite team and be able to root for specific players on other teams, which is actually quite beneficial for the NFL, sorry Jeremy Maclin.

So, I do not have a problem with the concept of fantasy football. With that being said. there is no doubt in my mind that daily fantasy sports is a form of high-stakes gambling, and as result, the industry must be regulated. The main argument for people who claim fantasy sports is not gambling is that it is a game of skill, rather than luck. While I do agree that there is some skill and knowledge involved (as evidenced by the DraftKings employee with insider knowledge who won 350,000 on a rival site), it doesn’t feel like much more skill than that of a game of poker or blackjack. Sure, having some football knowledge can help, but does that justify the thousands of dollars that some place on their games, where most lose that money, and a select few make a profit? That seems a lot like gambling to me, regardless of how much skill you think is involved. And I would argue almost all of it is luck, anyway. Football scoring and injuries between players are so volatile that two people who optimize their budgets could end up with similar scores. Take a toddler and a football super fan. Assuming they both have and use the standard $50,000 budget given to you by DraftKings, they each have very similar chances of outscoring the other, regardless of how much football knowledge they may have. That is just the reality of football, and major professional sports in general; it is an imperfect science.

What I find ironic is that the daily fantasy websites DraftKings and FanDuel implicitly admit this, advertising that any normal person can win one million dollars. Obviously, that’s an extreme example on their part, but the point is that for the one weekly fan who wins big, there are millions of fans (inherently a lot who undoubtedly have more “skill” or “knowledge”) who lose thousands, which doesn’t seem much different than that Chinese gambling game in How I Met Your Mother that no one really understands (“It’s not gambling if you absolutely know you’re going to win”).

There needs to be some regulation, limiting how much money people can invest in a weekly game in order to avoid the gambling aspect. Obviously if there was a ceiling set on a weekly bet, there can’t be weekly one million dollar winners, which I think is okay, and actually better. There is too much luck and volatility involved for that amount of winnings to be justified.

I really do think fantasy football is a positive for professional sports, increasing TV ratings and revenue in a time when there are more substitutes for Sunday football games than ever. But we must recognize the industry as a method of gambling, and therefore monitor and regulate its actions. I am not saying get rid of the sites altogether, but just ensure it doesn’t reach the point of becoming a gambling epidemic, where people are losing increasing amounts of money due to an addiction.

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