Yahoo new feature.

So Canada is banned? I'm visiting Vancouver and DK won't let me play

this doesn't really help the pros

I'm just a casual player and by the middle of last season I recognized every single pro or good player on yahoo because the same handful of people are in every 50/50, DU, and gpp. Its easy to game select away from these guys in h2h or count how many of them are in the DUs or 50/50s and decide if you want to play vs. them if you play seriously at all so the pros and experienced recreational players might as well have already been labeled in their eyes.

Maryland DFS looks like it is going to ballot. It seems most states are taking short cut by passing new gambling without constitutional amendment. All but a handful of states require that. I hope that doesn't come back to haunt DFS.

Indiana joined Virginia today as the second state to pass a law making DFS expressly Legal

http://www.legalsportsreport.com/923...fs-regulation/

It looks a lot like the VA law:

18 and up

No college sports (not sure if that was included in VA)

$50K fee, or loose change to FD/DK, deal breaker to most if not all others


It might not be perfect but I'll take it here and in as many states that want to join in as possible. This is pretty much best case other than the status quo, imo, and who knows how long that will last where it still exists.

not sure if this is the right thread but is fanduel glitching super hard for anyone else today

Same here, Joe. I can edit my lineups and export them fine, but when i then go to upcoming contests it still shows the original roster.

A site that can't afford to post a $50k license in a state has no business operating an online gambling site. The renewal is only $5,000 and there is no tax rate. A 10-year license would cost $9,500/yr average. Any site that thinks that is unreasonable to become legal and legit should close its doors. Players should be concerned about any site that thinks that scenario is too expensive.

To put that into perspective, NJ poker and casino licensees are paying about $5 million a year. 888 pays about $2 million a year in Delaware. It would require $15m to post for a California online poker license if it gets approved.

Thoughts?

Fantasy Sports Regulation: An Inclusive Way Forward

I would agree that a site should be able/willing to pay for licensing investigation costs, perhaps, ideally on some multi-state basis. That 888 may pay $2 million per year for a monopoly in Delaware is comparing apples and oranges.

It is not a matter of whether one or more sites can "afford" a fee, your reliance on a fee as a screening device is poor policy. Too high a fee bars innovative or start-up companies; not too many start-ups providing gambling services online in NJ or Delaware, VERY limited direct competition. For the right State market, $50K is a bargain for even a start-up, but how many times, in how many States, will markets demand $X as an entry fee, whether X = $50K or $5,000,000 or $50,000,000 ?

There is a huge difference between those fees. I only commented on the $50k fee. The $50k only applies if a company does not have long term thinking. The renewal fee is $5k per year. A site pays $9,500/yr over a 10-year period. How much lower do you want that to be? They are already paying $0.00002 in licensing per potential customer (based on the estimate of 4.7 million Indianans of age) and they aren't exposed to any other taxes.

There are costs to the state for licensing these sites. Any suggestion that taxpayers subsidize that would have caused friction in getting it passed. Sure, the state may make half of that original licensing fee but I doubt much profit will come out of the $5k annual renewal. If five sites get licensed, we're talking about half of a state employee's annual income for a process that will require state labor.

A B&M shop will pay far more than $9,500/yr in taxes and licensing. They will pay more than $50k if you include property, sales and corporate/personal income taxes.

If $50k is too much of an initial investment when renewals are $5k, what do you suggest? It is already lower than most other businesses in the state pay. It is hard to think there would have been any appetite to just give these sites a freebie.

It seems he thinks $50k per state is not an acceptable fee. I disagree and can't see how he can say operators should bear the costs but then he doesn't want to pay them. Otherwise, he makes some valid points.

I suspect lawmakers think this is a sweetheart deal when it comes to licensing gambling (or perceived gambling if you won't concede that point). I just don't see how lawmakers in states like Virginia and Indiana are just going to do this without charging a nominal fee for the process and structure.

Look, we can quibble endlessly over what is a "fair" amount. The practical effect of every state enacting similar licensing fees is quite clear--this will effectively create a FD/DK duopoly with a strong incentive for a merger to create a monopoly. Do you disagree with this? Regulations are supposed to benefit/protect the consumer. Yet who benefits in an oligopoly scenario?

States aren't going to subsidize online gambling sites. The other options are status quo or illegal. Maybe you prefer one of those. I doubt most people do.

A monopoly is common in gambling. WSOP has one in NV. 888 has one in DE. Many states only license one casino for a region. Most of those cases are by law. For DFS, it will simply be because few are properly capitalized, based on these theories.

I don't believe for a second that only DK and FD get licensed in these states.

No one is looking at a free lunch for DFS competitors, so that"freebie" argument is a red herring. You may not realize that a fair amount of capital investment and work goes into creating and operating a gaming or DFS site. Nothing "free" about it, and much of the costs come before the doors even open.

You seem enamored of license fees as a barrier to entry for "unworthy" operators, rather than go for more reasonable matters which might actually protect players directly ....

I would suggest that an open market be allowed to compete in State X, with licenses readily available to all providers, but with a security posting equal to a rolling 180 days of deposits from State X players less cashouts to State X players. That was historically a way to protect banks and VISA from credit card fraud.

Paying $50K or $5,000,000 to a State agency does nothing more than protect certain operators from competition. You've seen how well that has worked in online poker licensing in the US.

Ongoing "compliance" costs to the State can be funded by taxes on profits earned within State X.

Are the companies that pay the $50k licensing fee also pay income tax? It does not seem like that is the case. Replacing the fee with an income tax with a premium to cover the oversight expenses is a fair way with your proposal of posting a bond. I would prefer that model over the flat fee but it seems some want the equivalent of a subsidy.

I fully understand that but the amount the companies invest in themselves is irrelevant to licensing fees and taxes, as well as the expenses of oversight. The states don't care about that and it does not benefit them at all.

There is nothing in any of the licensing regulations that I've seen that exempts any of the DFS companies from income tax. Of course, they're currently losing money so that's a non-issue for now. But once they're regulated in a state they'll clearly have nexus to that state and need to file state income tax returns to that state.

Russ Fox

This is all that needs to be said really, but doesn't it also get a bit hairier since dfs will likely continue to be interstate commerce whereas online poker is not?

It doesn't even make any sense to have each state create a new regulatory body to provide overlapping oversight. I understand each state has slightly different sets of regulations but it pretty quickly becomes a pointless waste of money to force each site to pay a state registration fee for zero additional consumer protection.

Are you channeling Reid 2.0 ?

Protectionism is seldom a policy that benefits consumers, notwithstanding what you or The Donald may believe. As you note, most of the monopolies are dictated by some protectionist, anti-free market law or regulation.

In online markets, it is definitely anti-consumer to cut off the "long tail" effect of e-commerce, which is key to competition to offer products to every sustainable market niche.

Can anyone really doubt that were Nevada-licensed sites allowed to take poker players from the whle of the US, there would be more Nevada-licensed sites and players in additional States might be allowed to play, with their home State getting a cut of the rake. (Cue Reid 2.0 and a "Federal Solution" for DFS)

End of NCAA sports for DFS industry just taking hits.

not good and at the same time Daftkings squeezed its FPPs from 4 to 1 per $1

created 'tiered freerolls' where 75% of the money goes to its highest tier, which is its smallest subset obv..

rich keep on getting richer on DK

DK just reduced their reward system too

not even sure im going to put money back on draftkings for baseball