heh my coworker just asked me about "the scandal". that cant be good. he read it on deadspin.

had one of my friends ask me about it this morning also

Yep, this is a point I've been hammering here and at RG with my lame frat boy jokes well before this scandal. The sites, RG, and many, maybe even most of the top players are so intertwined it reeks of insider trading. This small good ole boys club rakes the rake, collects most of the affiliate kickback, and wins a huge percentage of the prizes. Oh they also happen to share lineups and sell advice (a lot of which I fell is bad, or at least incomplete) all while patting each other on the back and rarely, if ever, speaking out against any of the horse**** any of them are doing, like gannondorf firing 200 entries into a small 2500 field QUARTER game, or Max's algo going berserk in every "hand the umpire a ball in Milwaukee" along with THOUSANDS upon THOUSANDS of MLB entries on DK, every day, at all stakes.

The whole thing reeks, and of course one ill timed dumb tweet coupled with an impressive hot streak is what's gonna blow everything up. crazy world.

I just saw it on CTVnews in Canada where they had some sports columnist talk about it. Almost everyone will have heard about it soon. Not good for DFS at all.

This story is gaining so much national media attention it might prompt Congress to start talking about it.

The headline was on the screen everyone stares at in my elevator this morning. Prompted 2 dudes in front of me to start talking about it and laughing about how rigged it was. no joke

The public has been made more aware though in general, my dad has asked me about DFS lately, but anyone who watches a couple minutes of football this year has been inundated with commercials.

This is something that the sites should have seen coming. Employees should not be allowed to play period. Somebody at these sites should have realized there might be an issue. I know people will answer with PokerStars employees can play on Party, but it is not the same. If you are that good at DFS, then just do that.

Once Outside the Lines is running a program on out and Scott Van Pelt is doing segments on it then the **** has really hit the fan.

My boss asked me what I knew of the scandal today and how much it would actually help to have those numbers. DK did a terrible job of addressing this last week when they should have and now its blowing up in there face. Its not going to be the end of the world, just like operational errors mixed with ethical issues at any other fast growing startup haven't derailed the whole business, but it does go to show that they need someone to come from the outside with the mindset of a customer and regulator and advise them on what needs to be done to clean up the business and gain consumer trust. This is particularly true because there is money at stake which will always raise concerns for people and get government attention unlike data leaks/breaches at tech firms which go away much easier.

Its becoming apparent that the sites aren't cracking down on the sharks literally because "they are us". I think we're seeing what can happen when a bunch of 20-somethings are calling the shots. They're not seeing their companies in the same way that more experienced business people would.

I think its highly likely that they have little respect and great contempt for their customers. After all, they themselves are trying to take their money every night.

They don't understand PR. They don't compete. They appear to collude. Do any sites advertise lower rakes? Its just the same blah blah blah. Maybe one of these smaller sites can capitalize by advertising that their employees aren't allowed to play, and sharks are limited in the games they can play, or just that the site is run by adults. Anything to stress integrity.

OTL been working on this their piece for it since before the Ethan incident. Mark Fainaru-Wada, aka guy who ran Bond's name through mud, is the force behind it. i wasn't expecting good things before this... pretty spooked to see it now.

SVP was a big pro- Sports betting F DFS guy to begin with I think. That can't be good.

I took the SVP thing as pro gambling more than anti-DFS. I agree 100%, its an absolute joke that the NFL is completely against gambling, but then DFS shows up with big money and the league and even owners are jumping at the chance to partner up.

So the powerful (owners) can profit because DFS isn't gambling, but the powerless (college athletes) cannot even play because DFS is gambling?

both Amaya and Yahoo have the ability to spend on advertising and get this portion right. They should have more senior people with experience in large corporate environments ripe with professionalism and compliance. Yahoo also is trending in the right direction on the number of multiple entries they allow, but the software is horrendous.

Presidential election coming up - bunch of cons senators running for office trying to gain favor with their social base - control house and senate. Hmmm

yahoos been around for ~4 months and has had numerous scoring errors and you still can't mass swap a player out

they also had an advantage of copying what dk/fd did and still managed to create a horrible product

yes I agree. their software is unusable and their DEF scoring is ambiguous at best as to how some of the points count. I am investigating a possible scoring error there right now wrt SEA DST scoring last night.

NYT reporter was just on MSNBC they called it ''insider trading''. This is
untrue of course.Stock manipulators know ahead of time the positive
events that cause stocks to rise.Ethan may have faded the most popular
players to increase his chances of having a unique winning lineup but
his ''sleepers'' still had to produce.He had no guarantee or
foreknowledge of this happening.

The worst part is your average politician/bureaucrat/ban everything do
gooder are to lazy or ignorant to know or care about the
difference.They'll just hang the dishonest/ponzi/BAD FOR THE CHILDREN!
label on DFS.I enjoy DFS flaws and all.The gpp payout structure
sucks,ballers being allowed to enter 500 lineups at the push of a button
rubs me the wrong way but I make my own choices.I'll never get rich or
go bankrupt.The money I spend on DFS is lol irrelevant to my real life
expenses.I enjoy handicapping the games....period.The forces that want
to save me from myself have no concept of this type of thought.

So make up your minds DFS industry are you running a frat party or a
business.The poker boys thought the good times would last forever.Act
now DO NOT WASTE TIME! Poker did and now USA ipoker is dead and will be
for a very long time.

It's inexperienced operators who made this mistake. Yes, the DK employee should not have had access to the information, we all agree. The actual game impact, industry impact of that info? very little (probably none).

BUT the lack of response, and toothless response a week later, has now created an internet scandal snowball, fueling the detractors of the space to soapbox.

I hope they air it out, tell all, have the fall guy (Ethan sure cannot be the face of content anymore), answer the questions, and hopefully, just hopefully, that cools off the fire. For the sake of the entire industry, rip the band-aid off, and air it out, full transparency.

I mean wasn't this all known anyway. That one guy who writes all those DFS books on amazon has special access to draftkings data most people don't. He even talks about it in the book.

http://espn.go.com/chalk/story/_/id/...duel-advantage

shouldn't ESPN disclose that they take tens of millions of advertising dollars from DK and they co-sponsor a big tournament together. seems shady w/o that disclosure

Stupid ass employee biting the hand that feeds them. Sometimes people aren't as smart when greed clouds their judgement

what's funny is if he didn't want to be a DFS celebrity he could have just won and no one would have made the connection between him and the winner on FD

In response to a forum post along these lines I recall Bales saying he asked DK for that data to write his book - he doesn't have special access to it himself. DK also released the data publicly somewhere - it's not exclusive to the book.

Not anymore. It was until a huge fuss was made over it at RG.