\nCory Albertson was cruising at 30,000 feet and, like others on the plane to Detroit, taking care of some business on his laptop.<\/p>\n
\tHis spreadsheets contained names familiar to anyone who follows baseball. Pitchers, catchers, maybe a center fielder Albertson thought might be due for a home run or two.<\/p>\n
\tAlbertson\u2019s business on this day was trying to outsmart a few guys in one game, maybe a few thousand in another. Crunching numbers to enter some 500 fantasy sports contests before the first pitch of the day, he was hoping for a score before the night was out.<\/p>\n
\t\u201cI didn\u2019t look exactly, but I think I had about $22,000 invested for the day,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\tIt was just another day in baseball for Albertson and his partner, Ray Coburn. American football will be another story, with more than $100,000 of their bankroll in play on any given Sunday this fall.<\/p>\n
\tMillion dollar paydays. Big wins. Vegas junkets. Those are just some of the prizes offered online, where a hybrid of the traditional season-long fantasy leagues played by an estimated 41 million Americans has morphed into something quite different.<\/p>\n
\tIt\u2019s daily fantasy sports and it\u2019s legal in most states, thanks to an exemption the major sports leagues carved out under the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act of 2006. The same legislation that outlawed online poker as a game of chance allows fantasy players to do what regular sports bettors outside of Nevada only dream about \u2013 wager money online.<\/p>\n
\tIt may resemble sports betting, but those who run it \u2013 and those who play it \u2013 say it\u2019s not. They cite the gambling law that labels fantasy sports as a game of skill, where picking players to fill a team depends a lot less on sheer luck than picking a team to win a game against the Vegas spread.<\/p>\n
\tDaily or weekly cash games are just a fraction of the fantasy sports universe. The Fantasy Sports Trade Association says Americans spent $11 billion playing fantasy football alone in 2013. But the short-term cash games are exploding in popularity, and anyone over 18 with a credit card, a Paypal account and online access can play. Team headquarters on any given day can be in an airplane, an office, or even your basement.<\/p>\n
\tThere are also tens of thousands of losers, of course. The numbers dictate that more than half the players have to lose if the others are to win.<\/p>\n
\tOne company \u2013 the leading site FanDuel \u2013 has some $6 million a week up for grabs now and expects to triple its base to some 500,000 customers this NFL season. Dozens of other companies have sprouted up offering everything from daily play to help \u2013 for a fee \u2013 on selecting the right mix of players.<\/p>\n
\tThe profits are so easy \u2013 daily fantasy sites take about 10 percent off the top of every contest as their fee \u2013 that Comcast Ventures, the venture capital affiliate of giant Comcast Corporation, invested $11 million in FanDuel last year to get a piece of the action. Even mainstream media landmark Sports Illustrated is offering daily fantasy cash games of its own.<\/p>\n
\t\u201cTwo years ago investors would have been very skeptical, even nervous, about daily fantasy sports,\u201d said Nigel Eccles, the co-founder and CEO of FanDuel. \u201cToday they see this as very good for sports. Our players consume 40 percent more sports than regular fantasy sports players. They spend an average of 24 hours a week watching, searching and doing research on sports.\u201d<\/p>\n
\tAlbertson is so good at it that he has hedge funds and option trading desks talking to him about wanting to invest in his system. The former professional poker player was looking for something to keep his interest after online poker was effectively banned by the 2006 act. He found it just in time for the NFL season in 2011, investing $500 to start and adding a few hundred here and there as the losses started to mount.<\/p>\n
\tBut he came up with some basic rules, such as don\u2019t draft a quarterback and a field goal kicker from the same team because they\u2019re competing for the same scores. Later, he and Coburn developed an algorithm to maximize their chances while playing numerous games.<\/p>\n
\tAlbertson spends several hours a day studying players. During the NFL season, he and Coburn will work from Saturday afternoon until kickoff the next day on lineups for some 1,000 different contests.<\/p>\n
\t\u201cI knew it was a matter of time before I had a breakthrough week and was on the right side of the luck factor,\u201d Albertson said. \u201cI stayed with it that season and ended up with like $8,000 or something. I felt the model had sort of proven itself and most likely I was demonstrating I had a skill edge in these games.\u201d<\/p>\n
\tHe\u2019s not alone. Dan Gaspar was just out of college working as a claims representative at an insurance company in Wisconsin, when he started playing daily fantasy games three years ago. He has an MBA, but didn\u2019t need it to figure out that there could be more money to be made in online fantasy play than in the insurance business.<\/p>\n
\t\u201cCompared to what I was making as a claims representative there was quite a difference,\u201d Gaspar said. \u201cPlus I didn\u2019t have to get yelled at every day by people who just got in car accidents.\u201d<\/p>\n
\tGaspar won a spot in a contest offered by Draftstreet \u2013 which was recently acquired by Draftkings, the No. 2 player in the sport \u2013 offering a $1 million prize in Las Vegas at the end of last year\u2019s NFL season. He didn\u2019t win, but it was a perk that established him as a top player.<\/p>\n
\tStill, he says, he\u2019s not in a league like Albertson and others.<\/p>\n
\t\u201cOne of the more successful guys on here puts up $50,000 and up a night,\u201d he said. \u201cHe had a guy scratched because of flu-like symptoms one week and to have that much exposure on one player puts you in a horrible position. I put a pretty penny on the line every night, but it\u2019s not $50,000.\u201d<\/p>\n
\tPart of the lure of the games is that the rules are simple, and mostly already understood by the millions who get in traditional season-long fantasy leagues with their buddies. Most of those leagues simply offer bragging rights, or small cash rewards. The rules are the same for short-term games: Assemble a team under a salary cap and the stats of those players determine your score. Unlike the season-long games, the weekly competitions offer instant winners and quick cash.<\/p>\n
\tYou can play against one other player or thousands. Albertson enters 500 games a week.<\/p>\n
\tAnd if you happen to end up ahead, the winnings are deposited in your account before you wake up the next morning.<\/p>\n
\tIt\u2019s legal \u2013 except for in Arizona, Iowa, Louisiana, Montana, and Washington \u2013 where state laws are more strict. That\u2019s in contrast to online sports betting, which is allowed only in Nevada and, in a very limited form, in Delaware.<\/p>\n
\tStill, the success of any given player \u2013 no matter how skilled \u2013 is predicated on new players coming in who are not as sophisticated. Getting those players and keeping them even when they are losing money is why the sites offer double money bonuses, entries into various contests, and trips to Vegas among other enticements.<\/p>\n
\tAlbertson understands those players may not always be out there. Opposing players will get better, and the newbies will either have given up on their dreams of a big score or opted to compete in smaller games among other recreational players.<\/p>\n
\tRight now, though, it can be a lucrative business for those at the top. The day Albertson was filling out his teams on the plane to Detroit he ended up ahead $4,500 on his investment of $22,000.<\/p>\n
\tHe\u2019s not counting on it lasting. In the fall, he\u2019ll be playing from South Bend, where he is pursuing an MBA at Notre Dame so he will have something to fall back on.<\/p>\n
\t\u201cI don\u2019t know how long the fantasy sports opportunity is going to stay around. That\u2019s one reason grad school is appealing to me,\u201d he said. \u201cIt will help me figure out what the next chapter will be other than fantasy sports.\u201d<\/p>\n
No replies were posted for this topic.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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