looks like her based on the linkedin which includes her termination from IAC when the tweet happened. Man, that is not a good look.

lol yea that's definitely the same Justine Sacco.

Ray of Hope,

Just wondering, since I respect your opinion on it, do you think employees should be able to play on other sites? Feel like the issue is especially complicated since DFS is basically a duopoly.

I think it was important for sites to have employees that were players. They needed to have a good feel on the industry when making decisions for the site. 3-4 years in and that's probably not true anymore, they can get input from any number of outside sources/contractors/"team pros" and core members have enough experience in the industry to already have a feel for things.

So, it's probably for the best now that all employees can't play anywhere just to be safe. But tbh as long as data access is properly restricted, i personally don't have a problem with the majority of employees still being able to play.

This is exactly how I feel. An issue with banning it industry wide though is that it would maintain the duopoly because I do agree that it is imperative that you have players or former players working for you if you are building a new site or still on the outside looking it. It seems pretty clear that even a company as big as yahoo can get DFS so wildly wrong and basically seems like they have no idea how the industry works. This is evident in their software (hard to use), pricing (algo seems to too heavily weight ownership in previous week), and support (takes forever to get to a page where you can send an email and even longer to get a response). Its like they have a team of developers, but no one who truly understands the industry or what players want.

The focus on ownership percentages is missing the forest through the trees. What is essentially being scandalized here is that employees have access to significant and important insider information. Ownership percentages are one, but there are others which would be worse:

And this:

You might argue there's no definitive proof that this happens, and I could grant that there is no definite proof.

But by the same token I think you probably have to grant the skeptics larger point, that the uncertainty of who has access to what data is problematic for game integrity. The uncertainty is not comforting.

As others have said, there are far smaller businesses for far smaller industries which seemingly have better and more transparent data protection policies. I work in the IT space that interacts with customer data and we have strict contracts we sign with every client of ours for how we handle their customer data (e.g., names, addresses, emails) and there is strict protocol as to who has access to it, and we're liable (e.g., we would get sued) for mishandling the data.

It's not clear what the protocol is for the DFS industry but it's not hard to look mightily skeptically at guys who seemingly have insider information and are crushing the games. Of course the guys within the industry are also the kinds of people who would otherwise be sharp players, granted. So I wouldn't say there's some definitive case of cheating. But the optics surely are poor.

FFS, I can't believe that woman ever got hired in PR again. I mean, of course that tweet is going to come back out in any PR incident she is involved in again.

These people are amateurs drowning in VC money.

Perfectly said IMO

It would be cool if we could get a DraftKings and FanDuel specific thread like we had back in the day for Tilt and Stars with the reps occasionally responding.

They are obviously busy putting out fires atm and 2+2 isn't the same in terms of DFS compared to poker but wonder if FatalError or CS rep etc would pop-in and address question/suggestions etc

Mike Francessa just did a 20 minute segment on his show about it. It was a cringe worthy as you could imagine from an afternoon sports talk radio show.

Did anyone see Ethan's original tweet?

My favorite conspiracy theory was that it was meant to be a DM to someone

Ok, very well put and I agree. I think I was being somewhat naive.

The one thing you probably can and should have faith in is that the DFS sites upper management and backers (not necessarily their ops people ) seem like actual legitimate professionals with impressive experience/resumes.

So if you look at DK upper management, they seem legit. And their financial backers or at least big partners are ldo real companies like Disney/ESPN and the MLB and some owners of NFL franchises.

That seems categorically different than FT and UB and AP, which were run by just like actual degen poker players and like some frat boys from Montana.

Their slow response and poor PR notwithstanding, I think they stand better odds to recover from this. Maybe not gracefully, but without long-term lasting harm or undue attention from regulators. I would also concede I may be assuming too much.

ESPN keeping ads dropping in show DFS segments.

the in show segments were painful anyway. bad sign for DK, but good for everyone that watches TV.

Absolutely, if and only because they have companies behind them with significant lobbying power and government relationships.

I don't get how you can say the people running DK and FD are professionals and smart. They have been an absolute train wreck handling this and from my interactions with Aguiar, he's been nothing but demeaning as well as others have that view. Overall at DK I've interacted with some great people but how thy haven't come out and gotten in front. Of this is mind blowing. Whatever Pr company they are using is the absolute worst

interested in the nfl numbers next week

doubt this will have any effect

PR and Crisis PR are two very different disciplines. It they're smart, a short-term crisis team will be brought on board.

I said upper management, at least the founders and controlling partners, seem alot better than the online poker industry -- say FT or UB or AP. Compare the resumes of Matthew Kalish or Liberman to like Ray Bitar and Howard Lederer and Russ Hamilton. Compare the financial backers of DK and FD to a lot of the online poker sites. DFS seems more credible/reputable.

Obviously once you migrate away from that level, maybe the DFS operations and middle management and PR people are amateur clowns, hard to say. Obviously they aren't accounting well for themselves this week.

Front page of Business Insider lol



http://www.businessinsider.com/draft...anduel-2015-10

If you have a good PR team and a well run AND clean company then you wouldn't ever need crisis PR. If they never let employees access this data they wouldn't have had any problem. If they had addressed it last Sunday or Monday and given DFS players a satisfactory response then it wouldn't have reached mainstream media. They ****ed up bad on the operational level and the general PR level which is why we sit here now.

This is just intellectually dishonest unless they are talking about profits and not total winnings which seems unlikely.

they're talking about gross winnings... so yea that's awful.

But how much did they lose?