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The New York Times reports that in a major blow to a multibillion-dollar industry that introduced sports betting to legions of young sports fans, the New York State attorney general has ordered the two biggest daily fantasy sports companies, DraftKings and FanDuel, to stop accepting bets from New York residents, saying their games constituted illegal gambling under state law. "It is clear that DraftKings and FanDuel are the leaders of a massive, multibillion-dollar scheme intended to evade the law and fleece sports fans across the country," says NY attorney general, Eric T. Schneiderman, "Today we have sent a clear message: not in New York, and not on my watch."
Fantasy sports companies contend that their games are not gambling because they involve more skill than luck and were legally sanctioned by a 2006 federal law that exempted fantasy sports from a prohibition against processing online financial wagering. "Fantasy sports is a game of skill and legal under New York state law," says FanDuel. "This is a politician telling hundreds of thousands of New Yorkers they are not allowed to play a game they love and share with friends, family, co-workers and players across the country." The attorney general's office also said that ads on the two sites "seriously mislead New York citizens about their prospects of winning." State investigators found that to date, "the top 1 percent of DraftKings winners receive the vast majority of the winnings." Schneiderman's investigation was spurred after reports arose that a DraftKings employee used internal data to win $350,000 on rival site FanDuel, which the operators denied. While both companies had allowed employees to place bets on the others site, they have since banned such practices.
(Score: 4, Funny) by slinches on Wednesday November 11 2015, @05:33PM
What? Punters don't count for anything in these games and certainly aren't "money makers". I guess they could score a few points if they're also the field goal kicker, but that's fairly rare these days.
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Wednesday November 11 2015, @06:47PM
Don't get me started on how ridiculous it is that a "team" is now an offense squad, a defense squad, special-play people, and needs the differentiate between who kicks a ball from the ground and from their own hands...
No wonder every team always has an asshole who beats his girl, isn't that statistically true of pretty much any group of 100 people?
(Score: 2) by slinches on Wednesday November 11 2015, @07:13PM
See the problem is that with a smaller roster you're limited in depth in case of injuries, so they increased the roster size. Then with a bigger roster, teams figured out that they could improve by having more specialized position players. But then there was limited depth at those positions, so they increased the roster size ...
(Score: 2) by Bogsnoticus on Wednesday November 11 2015, @11:48PM
No, they're not limited
Take Australian Rules Football (AFL) for example.
They field a team of 22, 18 active on field, and 4 on the interchange bench. They also have 1 substitute player available in case of serious injury.
AFL is played on a field typically twice the size of an NFL pitch, has the same intensity player on player impacts, but without any padding, all players are expected to be able to tackle, kick, handball, be effective at both attack and defence, and have 360 degree situational awareness because of it being non-linear in how you create plays.
You don't need a huge squad, if you actually hire talented people. In NFL it seems the "talent" half of the players possess is to be an incredibly fat bastard who can stand in a line, and then fall forward onto the opposition player as soon as he hears someone yell "hut!"
Genius by birth. Evil by choice.
(Score: 2) by PartTimeZombie on Thursday November 12 2015, @12:51AM
The AFL have ditched the sub beginning next season, 4 interchange players, maximum of 80 interchanges per match.
I just checked, and the Melbourne Cricket Ground is 173.6 long x 148.3 metres wide which makes it an oval of approximately 4 times the area of an NFL ground. (Unless my maths is off, which might be the case).
While most Football type games have some sort of specialist players, (Props in Rugby Union, Ruckmen in AFL Football) American Football seems to have taken this to absurd lengths, as you point out. I've often wondered how much better the NFL would be if there were no pads or helmets, and match day squads were limited to 11 players and (say) 4 subs.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 12 2015, @03:27PM
No, this is not correct. American football has much more violent impacts facilitated by the extra padding. The irony in that sport is that the extra padding has actually made it more dangerous to the players. All the helmet does is keep your head from being split open, but that force still has to go somewhere. The football helmet of the last several decades, complete with reinforced facemask and backed by the neckroll, have led to very violent head-first hits and tackles, which is an issue the NFL is having a tough time getting rid of (it is an interesting conundrum they are in where they are trying to eliminate these hits in the name of player safety, but they also make a lot of money glorifying these hits in highlight reels). Some coaches are trying to return to the sport's roots and teach proper rugby-style shoulder-based tackling [nbcsports.com].
From a player safety standpoint, the best thing the NFL could do (in my opinion) is to reduce the amount of padding. Get rid of the facemask, for instance, if you don't want head-first tackles, but you'd probably have to go back to soft helmets so that you don't take a hard plastic helmet to the teeth. However, it is tough to compare across sports when it comes to things like concussions because there is no standard way of recognizing and diagnosing them. Concussions have become a big issue in both the NFL and Rugby Union, but it is really hard to compare them as to which is "worse" because those numbers depend upon cases being detected and reported.
(Score: 0, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 11 2015, @07:16PM
What? Punters don't count for anything in these games and certainly aren't "money makers". I guess they could score a few points if they're also the field goal kicker, but that's fairly rare these days.
That's only one definition of punter [cambridge.org].
Looks like that American football has stunted your intellectual development, or at least your imagination in terms of cultural differences. Post concussion syndrome [webmd.com], perhaps?
(Score: 3, Insightful) by slinches on Wednesday November 11 2015, @07:44PM
Or, it may possibly be that I was gently poking fun at someone for using British slang terminology on a US based website while discussing an article about banning gambling at sites that are dedicated to American Football (a sport in which the terminology in question refers to a specific position on the team) in one of the states which comprise the United States of America.
Nope, must be that I'm an ignorant American that can't conceive of the same word having two different meanings.
Also, thanks for explaining the joke for everyone. It's almost always funnier when spelled out in painstaking detail.
Note: this post may contain a hint of sarcasm, just in case you have trouble detecting such things.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 11 2015, @08:05PM
Or, it may possibly be that I was gently poking fun at someone for using British slang terminology on a US based website while discussing an article about banning gambling at sites that are dedicated to American Football (a sport in which the terminology in question refers to a specific position on the team) in one of the states which comprise the United States of America.
Nope, must be that I'm an ignorant American that can't conceive of the same word having two different meanings.
Also, thanks for explaining the joke for everyone. It's almost always funnier when spelled out in painstaking detail.
Note: this post may contain a hint of sarcasm, just in case you have trouble detecting such things.
Same AC here.
Maybe I was just poking fun at American Football and the idiocy of same by implying that those who enjoy it are stupid.
No sarcasm here, in case your detector is off today, friend.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 11 2015, @11:32PM
Bit of the pot calling the kettle black there, innit? [concussionfoundation.org] Association Foorball ("soccer" in the U.S.) results in quite a bit of post concussion syndrome [postconcussionsyndromeawarenessuk.com] among its players, too.
Besides, soccer players have their own particular brand of idiocy (although the women's players seem to [wordpress.com]have that bit sorted out [pinimg.com], go figure).
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 12 2015, @12:01AM
Bit of the pot calling the kettle black there, innit? Association Foorball ("soccer" in the U.S.) results in quite a bit of post concussion syndrome among its players, too.
Besides, soccer players have their own particular brand of idiocy (although the women's players seem to have that bit sorted out, go figure).
Same AC again. You've got me all wrong. I'm not British as you thought. I'm just not ignorant of other cultures.
Soccer? Another stupid game. Both are just modern-day equivalents of circuses [wikipedia.org] to appease the masses while their corporate overlords fleece their countries.
And when the participants are injured or killed, so much the better, no?
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Thursday November 12 2015, @03:14PM
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves