\nMason Levinson, Bloomberg<\/p>\n
\tThe rapid evolution of fantasy sports from casual season-long recreation to high-stakes daily Internet games has given U.S. professional sports another source of revenue as well as a headache in determining player- participation policies.<\/p>\n
\tOver the last year, all four major U.S. sports leagues signed sponsorship deals with daily fantasy websites through players, teams or the league itself. They are now promoting a business that, while legal in most of the U.S., resembles sports gambling because participants profit by correctly predicting success.<\/p>\n
\tAs the Major League Baseball season gets under way Sunday, players for the first time won\u2019t be permitted to join paid fantasy baseball leagues, following an agreement between the sport and its players\u2019 union. The National Basketball Association and its players\u2019 union disagree as to whether players are prohibited from participating.<\/p>\n
\t\u201cThe leagues are fully embracing and monetizing daily fantasy, but simultaneously are putting rules in place to bar league athletes, coaches and trainers from participating,\u201d according to Ryan Rodenberg, who teach sports law at Florida State University. Sports leagues are facing a \u201cpolicy tightrope,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\tLegal in most states because of a 2006 federal law declaring it skill-based, entry fees for one-day fantasy games were $245,000 in 2013 and are expected to rise to $11 billion by 2018, according to Eilers Research LLC.<\/p>\n
\tThe most recent collective bargaining agreements between the leagues and players \u2014 signed before daily fantasy\u2019s growth \u2014 ban gambling within their own sports. Fantasy, however, is more difficult to classify.<\/p>\n
\tFantasy Sports<\/p>\n
\tThe pastime, where team owners draft players and compare their statistics to determine a winner, has been growing since the 1980s as a season-long venture. In daily fantasy, players draft new teams every day, winning as much as $2 million.<\/p>\n
\tMLB, which has a sponsorship deal with DraftKings Inc., the second-biggest fantasy site by entry fee, agreed with its players\u2019 union during the offseason to ban players from participating in any fantasy baseball game that offers money or other prizes, according to league spokesman Pat Courtney.<\/p>\n
\t\u201cWe want it to be about competition on the field and for on-field personnel to have no other outside influences on them with regard to the game,\u201d Courtney said in a phone interview.<\/p>\n
\tThe deal doesn\u2019t limit players\u2019 ability to sign sponsorship deals or other business transactions with fantasy sites, Greg Bouris, a spokesman for the MLB Players Association, said in an e-mail.<\/p>\n
\tTeam Sponsorships<\/p>\n
\tThe NBA has an equity partnership with New York-based FanDuel Inc., the largest daily fantasy website. NBA teams, including the Los Angeles Lakers and New York Knicks, have sponsorship deals with the New York-based company. The Philadelphia 76ers and Golden State Warriors have agreements with DraftKings.<\/p>\n
\t\u201cOur policy is that NBA personnel are prohibited from participating in NBA fantasy leagues that require payment of an entry fee or award prizes to participants,\u201d Mike Bass, an NBA spokesman, said in an e-mailed statement.<\/p>\n
\tGary Kohlman, general counsel of the National Basketball Players Association, said the union has never been advised of the ban.<\/p>\n
\t\u201cIrrespective of whether anyone would agree that such a rule is appropriate or not, the NBPA\u2019s position is that rules affecting player conduct are a subject of collective bargaining,\u201d Kohlman said.<\/p>\n
\tNational Football League spokesman Brian McCarthy said it wasn\u2019t an issue and didn\u2019t respond to further questions about it.<\/p>\n
\tPlayers Inc.<\/p>\n
\tAhmad Nassar, NFL Players Inc. president, agreed with the league\u2019s stand that it wasn\u2019t an issue, though a situation the union was \u201cwatching closely.\u201d<\/p>\n
\t\u201cWe\u2019ve been in discussions about it,\u201d Nassar said in a January phone interview. \u201cAs a general matter, those are league rules and if they want to change the rules they\u2019d have to talk to the union about it.\u201d<\/p>\n
\tThe National Hockey League, also a DraftKings endorser, said in a statement from Deputy Commissioner Bill Daly:<\/p>\n
\t\u201cWe do not consider fantasy sports (particularly \u2018play for free\u2019 fantasy sports) to constitute gambling, and neither do nearly all of the jurisdictions and legislative bodies who have opined on that issue. That said, the NHL\u2019s rules do not permit players to participate in fantasy hockey-based games for cash prizes.\u201d<\/p>\n
\tJonathan Weatherdon, a spokesman for the NHL Players\u2019 Association, said in January that the issue hadn\u2019t come up between the league and union.<\/p>\n
\t\u2018Why Ban?\u2019<\/p>\n
\tThe leagues\u2019 stands create a question: If daily fantasy poses no threat to the integrity of sports, \u201cThen why the ban?\u201d asked Florida State\u2019s Rodenberg.<\/p>\n
\tThe Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act, which carved out a legal standing for fantasy sports in 2006, makes no mention of one-day leagues. FanDuel began in 2009.<\/p>\n
\tPhiladelphia Eagles running back DeMarco Murray, whose fantasy statistics with the Dallas Cowboys were among the NFL\u2019s best last season, said during Super Bowl week in Arizona that he doesn\u2019t play fantasy football, but that some of his teammates do.<\/p>\n
\t\u201cI don\u2019t want to name them, but they talk about it quite often,\u201d Murray said during a news conference panel discussion.<\/p>\n
\t\u201cThey\u2019re just having fun, just like everyone else,\u201d Murray said later in an interview. \u201cI don\u2019t think they would throw a game or try to get cute.\u201d<\/p>\n
\t\u2018It\u2019s Gambling\u2019<\/p>\n
\tFormer NBA player Roger Mason Jr., now deputy executive director of player relations for the NBPA, said that to his knowledge players aren\u2019t playing daily fantasy basketball and that it remained under the radar of most.<\/p>\n
\t\u201cIt\u2019s gambling,\u201d Mason said in an interview during All- Star Weekend in New York. \u201cIf you\u2019re putting money down, and winning money in return, that\u2019s gambling.\u201d<\/p>\n
\tAthletes have the ability to influence daily fantasy results in any number of ways, both on the field of play and through off-field access to inside information, such as injuries or disgruntled players, Rodenberg said in a phone interview.<\/p>\n
\t\u201cTo the extent that daily fantasy is a skill-based game, your skill is going to be based on how quickly you can gather and assimilate information,\u201d Rodenberg said.<\/p>\n
\tWayne Norman, an ethics professor at Duke University, said he didn\u2019t find it hypocritical for leagues to be in business with daily fantasy websites while banning player participation, but that it did invite a legitimization of gambling.<\/p>\n
\tLegal Gambling<\/p>\n
\tLeagues don\u2019t prohibit their players from legal gambling on other sports, which for now would require a trip to Nevada, the only state where bets on individual games are allowed. Access to legal daily fantasy, however, is as near as a smartphone.<\/p>\n
\tDavid Klein, a managing partner at the New York law firm Klein Moynihan Turco LLP, which focuses on the gambling and fantasy sports industries, said bans on player participation eventually will be written into all the leagues\u2019 bylaws. He also said pro athletes shouldn\u2019t be able to play any fantasy sports, using the NBA\u2019s Knicks and NHL\u2019s Rangers, which share Madison Square Garden, as an example of why not.<\/p>\n
\t\u201cIf I\u2019m a hockey player and I\u2019m friends with a basketball player in the same arena, I may try to influence them,\u201d Klein said in a phone interview. \u201cYou get closer and closer to that and then you have collusion among the professional athlete community.\u201d<\/p>\n
No replies were posted for this topic.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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