Fantasy Sports Betting Hypocrisy

While it is true that we at CollegeFootballWinning.com are dispassionate in our college football betting analysis, choosing to use quantified data to inform our betting recommendations, every so often we express an opinion on a matter that tangentially applies to our area of expertise. This article is the expression of just such an opinion. Playing fantasy sports for money is gambling. If one offers money that could be lost in exchange for the possibility of winning more money, then that is gambling. Playing fantasy sports for money does exactly that. In this article, we will examine some of the Fantasy Sports Trade Associations (FTSA) arguments for why playing fantasy sports is not gambling, and how those arguments are simply fallacious. (Yes, fantasy sports has its own trade association.)

One can go to the FTSA website where they have a page dedicated entirely to Why Fantasy Sports Is Not Gambling. (To quote Shakespeare, The lady doth protest too much, methinks.) They cite five reasons why fantasy sports is not gambling. We will examine each one, and give our response to each:

ARGUMENT #1: Its a game of skill.RESPONSE: The very elements cited for why fantasy sports is a game of skill (considering statistics, seeking to synthesize vast amounts of information, accounting for injuries, coaching styles, weather patterns, home and away statistics, etc.) are ALL part of being consistently successful in sports betting. The FTSA also states that highly skilled players win games more frequently, proving that success in fantasy sports is not just random chance. Successful (i.e. skilled) sports bettors can claim the EXACT same.

ARGUMENT #2: The federal government does not define fantasy sports as gambling.RESPONSE: This is an appeal to authority, which offers no proof whatsoever. In fact, the carve out to the 2006 federal bill (to which the FTSA refers) exempts games that have an outcome that reflects the relative knowledge of the participants, and has an outcome that is determined predominantly by accumulated statistical results of sporting events. Professional sports bettors rely on outcomes that reflect their knowledge of the participants (so the first part of the argument is dead), but the outcome having to be determined by accumulated statistical results is clearly written just for the fantasy sports industry, which paid for a lobby to get this carve out written and passed.

ARGUMENT #3: Gambling-sensitive organizations support fantasy sports.RESPONSE: FTSA cites the fact that ... all the major professional sports leagues support and often host their own fantasy sports leagues. In other words, as long as they have a piece of the action, they are perfectly comfortable with others gambling. The major sports leagues have spent so much of their past decrying the ills of gambling that they would simply appear too hypocritical to profit (directly) from it. Redefining sports betting was the cunning way the leagues discovered to allow them to profit from gambling.

ARGUMENT #4: The behavior of fantasy sports playersdiffers greatly from sports bettors. FTSA claims that fantasy sports players are motivated to enter the hobby for reasons that have nothing to do with money or prizes.RESPONSE: Whom do they think they are kidding? The two biggest independent fantasy sports companies both have their own channels on YouTube. The one has six commercials on the channel, and EVERY ONE touts how people can win real money playing fantasy sports. In their most famous set of commercials, the other company ends by saying, BEST OF ALL, you can win a ship load of money. If fantasy sports players were motivated to play fantasy sports for reasons that have nothing to do with money, then why would these companies spend so much on advertising playing for real money and winning large sums of real money?

ARGUMENT #5: No fantasy sports company has ever been the subject of prosecution for gambling.RESPONSE: Of course not! They already paid for that legislative carve out to exempt fantasy sports from being labeled as gambling. What a convenient straw man argument.

CONCLUSIONPlaying fantasy sports for money is gambling. The industry, especially the daily sports variety, is just too new for any meaningful longitudinal studies. When such studies are conducted, we believe that a similar portion of daily, real-money fantasy sports players will exhibit the same troubling characteristics of other problem gamblers. When the fantasy sports industry becomes more transparent, we believe their hold will be shown to be even greater than that of the traditional bookmakers who (for football in Nevada, at least) have held an average of just 4.55% the past seven years.CollegeFootballWinning.com