The Latest DFS Fallout
I had hoped to be done with this topic for the offseason. The mistakes of the two main daily fantasy (DFS) operators – FanDuel and DraftKings – have become increasingly apparent. After slowly ramping up advertising in 2013 and 2014, we’ve been hit with a flood of TV and radio spots pushing daily fantasy as a get rich quick scheme.
Now we’ve entered a new chapter of the daily fantasy drama. Last week, New York’s Attorney General Eric Schneiderman declared daily fantasy to be gambling. He asked FanDuel and DraftKings to cease and desist all operations in New York. They’re now the seventh state to ban the games. And once again, DFS has drawn negative press in comedy news – this time from John Oliver.
Let me be clear, my educational background is in behavioral economics. I have no legal expertise to offer. Since much of the following pertains to legal issues, you should take my opinions with a grain of salt.
With the exception of gambling states like Nevada, I see no reason why states would seek to ban daily fantasy. The sites practically force you to report your earnings to the government so the state and federal folks get a slice of your winnings. You can think of daily fantasy as a zero-sum game with the sites taking a rake and the government taxing winners. Because you can’t report daily fantasy as a job (and thus losses as a business expense), it’s simply a way for the government to tax us at a higher effective rate. Rationally, why would they ban a revenue source?
It also seems to me that the industry brought this upon itself by increasing its visibility without good self-regulation. The “insider trading” scandal is the biggest to hit the industry thus far. DraftKings employees have used information from their site to leverage winnings on FanDuel. Presumably, the same has happened in the other direction. I think we all agree that’s unfair. The sites should have foreseen the issue and prohibited their employees from playing any DFS.
The other problems facing the industry – namely the question of skill or luck – strike me as semantics. I usually cite a simple smell test – do you have an equal chance to win with a random roster? If the answer is yes, then it’s a game of luck. If it’s no, then it’s a game of skill. If you randomly select your roster, you’ll probably be stuck with several dead spots. Therefore, it’s a game of skill.
Related to this luck or skill issue is their disingenuous advertising position. Nowadays, anyone playing DFS to get rich is a fool. When the industry was new, there was easy money to snipe. Not anymore. Unfortunately, the sites still advertise to the “play once and win big” mindset. Any one-off contest is mostly luck. But the point of the game is to play an entire season.
For all their mistakes, the sites are trying to fight back. It’s unclear if their efforts will help or exacerbate their problems. Both DraftKings and FanDuel have sued the Attorney General over the decision to ban the game. New York represents a substantial customer base, so the financial damages to both sites could be staggering.
New York is also an influential state. It’s possible other states will now consider changing their interpretation of the game as a “skill.” If New York’s position cascades to other states, daily fantasy will be fighting for its life. While they have a presence in other countries, most of their business is via American customers.
I don’t know anything about the legal standing of FanDuel and DraftKings’ cases against Schneiderman. My instinct says they’re unlikely to succeed. And if they fail here, they may soon find themselves fighting for their lives elsewhere too.
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Aren’t blackjack, poker, craps, etc. considered a form of gambling? Surely your chances of winning at those games would decrease if you made random plays. By your test, only slot machines would justify regulation. Additionally, there’s something to be said for the addictive and predatory nature of gambling and what might be termed pseudo-gambling that you fail to account for. There’s more to regulation than managing a revenue stream.
I didn’t care to write a 300 word qualification of that statement. It was intentionally vague because it’s not the point. The smell test has to be adjusted to the nature of the game. Your decisions in blackjack and craps are based on simple math. Hold ’em is also simple math with an added layer of reading other players/bluffing.
Poker is widely considered a game of skill, and I would hazard that it’s more skillful than DFS. Of course, that hasn’t stopped others from calling it luck-based.
The fact that experts have devised algorithms for selecting DFS rosters suggests the game is also a matter of understanding mathematics. Poker at least has an element of player interaction (e.g., bluffing).
Bluffing ban be quantified as well.
I point you here: http://www.amazon.com/The-Mathematics-Poker-Bill-Chen/dp/1886070253
The thing about poker in Vegas is that you don’t play against the house. The house provides the table and takes a cut of the pot. You can make a pretty good argument that poker is a skill game (which is one reason the house doesn’t play), but for historical reasons most states are still going to consider it gambling.
All other casino games, with the just-barely exception of blackjack, are structured so that over the long run, the player will always lose. A knowledgeable player can reduce the house edge some, but not enough to turn the odds in the player’s favor. That’s one characteristic that makes them be considered gambling — winning is only possible with a short-term run of luck. (Followed immediately by a judicious exit.)
Poker and Blackjack are demonstrably skill games. I don’t see the former as controversially so (there are entire sections in Barnes and Noble dedicated to poker skill development). The latter is perhaps less intuitively so, but it it is. The reason it gets muddy is two-fold:
1) The most skill intensive aspects of it–those that can provide players with an “edge,” such as card counting–are effectively banned in casinos.
2) Without card counting, and just playing the odds of each hand identically without tracking the cards that remain in the shoe whatsoever, it’s mathematically impossible for players to generate an edge on the house (though maximizing winnings, or rather, minimizing losses, is still a question of skill–some players will do better than others, and players can perform better than they would with strictly random play selections).
I don’t know enough about craps to comment, but games like Roulette are certainly luck based (as are slots, lotteries, etc).
As someone who sometimes plays craps, it’s basically all luck. I mean, randomly placing bets isn’t a good idea because some bets have more of a house advantage than others, but if you win money (on one roll or in a night playing), it’s becuase you were on a lucky streak. You didn’t do anything to really skillfully “earn” it. Blackjack (without counting cards) is the same. Poker is different, in my mind.
“do you have an equal chance to win with a random roster? If the answer is yes, then it’s a game of luck. If it’s no, then it’s a game of skill. If you randomly select your roster, you’ll probably be stuck with several dead spots. Therefore, it’s a game of skill.”
No one plays “games of luck” the way you seem to think they do. For example, blackjack, if people just played randomly they would constantly lose. It requires some skill to determine when to hit/stay/double down/etc. Yet blackjack is undoubtedly considered gambling. What makes DFS different? There’s some skill involved, but still most of it is luck based.
Would blackjack be considered gambling if card counting was legal? Almost certainly not, since pros would be taking money from the house regularly. Also, blackjack wouldn’t exist in casinos. So isn’t it just the prohibition on card counting that makes it “gambling”? And then, isn’t the definition of gambling just any zero sum game where no individual player is favored to win? If an individual can become favored to win, then it becomes a skill game, which is more-or-less what Brad was saying.
Per federal and state legislation, gambling is defined as any contest in which the results are determined more by luck than by skill.
I mean, I guess, but that’s a completely arbitrary and nearly unquantifiable distinction.
It is subjective but not arbitrary.
It’s only not arbitrary if it can be shown to be a meaningful, objective distinction though, no?
(I also wasn’t strictly speaking from a legal perspective, but more in terms of the difference between how a game like poker is viewed as skill based where Blackjack often isn’t, though you could certainly make a case that poker fits the legal definition of gambling while retaining that it is a skill based game).
No, that’s not what arbitrary means. An arbitrary decision is one made without obvious significance, such as if the government decided that companies that had payouts above $1 million would be considered gambling while anyone below that would not. You’re correct that it’s incredibly difficult to tease out specific levels of luck and skill, and therefore estimations of those levels are going to be subjective. Yet defining gambling on those terms makes sense, as the difference between luck and skill is significant to the type of game being played and how it is won. Therefore that classification is not at all arbitrary.
And poker is not skill-based, it is skill-influenced. It has more skill than most forms of gambling, but is still more luck than skill. Brad set up a false dichotomy of skill or no skill when the reality is that games fall along a continuum. Lotteries have all luck and no skill. Some forms of gambling have 90% luck and 10% skill, some have 75% luck and 25% skill, some have 67% luck and 33% skill, etc.
Card counting is legal. The house bans players who the suspect of counting and will charge them with trespassing if they come back (also legal), but even if that did not happen it is still gambling, gambling with and edge but still gambling.
But your entire premise is that there is some kind of definable distinction between luck and skill, when you also admit that in a significant number of cases, such a distinction isn’t possible.
There’s no such thing as a “skill based game” by your definition, it’s a meaningless term. Any game that is based solely on the actions of a single participant and involve no conditions beyond their control is, by definition, not a game. You can create whatever kind of definitions about percentages you want, but unless you can actually quantify those percentages, the result essentially is arbitrary even if the theory itself isn’t. Your delineation doesn’t meaningfully meet the proposed criteria without measurement, and thus becomes functionally arbitrary, because you can’t actually measure what 50% skill is.
The example raised below of the difference of cash games vs. tournaments (in poker) is an example of a situation where this distinction becomes problematic. Put eight pro poker players in a single table tournament with small antes, and the more skilled players will be favored. If there are significant differences in their skill levels, and the antes remain small, the more skilled players will be more substantially favored. Not all that different than what happens beginning with the Division Series in baseball. Yet no one would ever argue baseball, in even a playoff format, is not skill based.
Can athletes affect the outcome of the “contests”? Are they prohibited from participating? If not, should they be?
Players are not allowed to play DFS. They’re also banned from playing fantasy sports. It’s unclear to me if they’re allowed to play DFS for other sports though.
Not true. How many MLB players play fantasy football? We hear stories about them playing every year.
Good points, but this is not correct “the point of the game is to play an entire season.” The only game that counts in DFS is todays game. unlike seasonal fantasy, you can have vastly different lineups each and every day and choose among all MLB players and not just the players you drafted, and results from 1 day do not carry over to the next
As for the definition of luck, lets define random. Random in DFS is simply chosing any group of players that allows you to hit the maximum payroll without regard for anything but their price. I actually did this a few times when I was up against the clock to enter the contest before closing and after a bad stretch, and one time one of my random entries outperformed my well thought out lineups that factored in opponent, home park, weather conditions, hot streaks, pitcher-batter splits, etc. I usually played 5-10 teams per contest and concluded at the end that random was probably just as good as overthinking it some days.
I don’t have enough data to conclude anything but I did look at the winners lineups each day and I can tell you I saw some pretty random looking lineups with players who were the big scorers that no rational person would pick
I’m pretty sure I’ve read each of your articles on daily fantasy, and am therefore not particularly surprised by your conclusions here. I’m increasingly of the opinion that you have a difficulty staying unbiased here because your job is to write about fantasy baseball. A huge portion of that audience is for daily fantasy. If that decreases, then so does your value, and therefore your job security and paycheck. I can understand that, even if the connection occurs subconsciously and not consciously, so I don’t necessarily begrudge you some bias.
However, there’s a good deal of rationalizing and questionable logic here. Starting with:”it’s simply a way for the government to tax us at a higher effective rate. Rationally, why would they ban a revenue source?”
The government’s job is not to maximize revenue. That’s what corporations do. The government’s job is to do things like ban revenue sources; this is why we don’t see legalized and taxed heroin. That would be a revenue source. But at some point the social costs of allowing something outweigh the economic benefits. Perhaps you see that as an extreme example, and perhaps it is; the point is simply that revenue is not and should not be the thing that determines whether the government decides whether something is illegal.
The second problem is: “do you have an equal chance to win with a random roster? If the answer is yes, then it’s a game of luck. If it’s no, then it’s a game of skill”
Well, no. That’s excessively simple. Under this definition, poker and blackjack aren’t gambling. Roulette and slots would be, probably craps. The line for gambling cannot be “is there ANY skill involved?”. Ray & James hit this point above, but it’s worth pointing out again, mostly because it seems to combine with the first to invalidate the entire post.
The fact that these companies haven’t conducted themselves as good citizens drives the final nail. You suggest that the point of DAILY fantasy is to play a FULL SEASON to see winnings. And you realize that’s not how it’s being presented; they’re selling it in the exact same way states sell lotteries. “Play once, win a million dollars!” This is not “unfortunate”, it’s intentional, because it works. But hey, advertising’s been lying to us for decades; that’s not new or even that egregious anymore, so they needed to take it up a notch and actually break the law by using insider information to win money.
So let’s recap the “latest” DFS fallout. This is an industry that publicly besmirched itself after all of four years of existence, that bills itself publicly as something it’s not to manipulate people into playing, and legally as something it’s not to sneak past regulations. I’m not sure what the value is in defending it anymore, and if I were at any of the pro leagues that hopped in bed so quickly I would be backpedaling as fast as I can. New York is not the first domino to fall and it won’t be the last.
Oh I won’t pretend I’m not biased. I enjoy playing DFS, I enjoy writing about it, and a decent chunk of my income is related to it. But I wouldn’t be participating if I believed it was a scam. I’m convinced that with strategic play and enough knowledge, anybody can win – even with the algos and rakes ruining the odds.
At it’s heart, it’s a fun game that takes fantasy sports to the obvious next iteration. Obviously, not everyone agrees. I’ve been saying for years that the game could benefit from more regulation. However, a need for regulation is not the same as a need to ban it entirely.
Does anyone remember what happened in the Breeders Cup a few years back, well maybe more than a few now. An OTB tech and his buddy were able to hit the pick six, were the only winners, won millions, because he was able to basically retroactively fix his ticket. They got caught, went to jail. There are NO safeguards at DFS to prevent anything like that or numerous other ways the game could be manipulated from the inside, only a fool would put there money in the hands of these DFS sites when all you have is their vow to police themselves, there are billions at stake and they will take as much as they can by hook or by crook.
Give it up Brad. The leagues got into bed with a complete scam enterprise in shockingly quick fashion. DFS should be illegal as it is currently functioning. It is a con in every manner by which it is representing itself. What is even more ridiculous is the focus on advice for DFS, as if following any nationally posted advice could possibly lead to a winning roster when countless others are following the same advice.
If you can intentionally lose over the long-run by playing suboptimally, then it’s a game of skill. It’s not candyland or a lottery.
It’s weird that “skill” is the legal standard, because many gambling games involve skill.
Yep, it seems like a pretty gross simplification and just a way to give people something to anchor onto. It doesn’t really seem to be anyone’s point though, and from a purely philosophical perspective, it’s at best a straw man and at worst a point against legislation.
But, at the same time, DFS very quickly became far more predatory and manipulative than online poker. I would much prefer they were flipped (poker legal, DFS banned), but DFS specifically in its current incarnation is highly problematic (for many of the reasons Brad mentions).
*facepalm* The point of daily fantasy leagues is most certainly not to play an entire season. The advertisements from these sites make it absolutely clear that you’re not expected to do so, and I can’t imagine that there were more than a handful of people who played daily fantasy every single day from April 5th through October 4th. Can you honestly tell me that you did? Again, it’s fine that you enjoy DFS and I understand you defending something you write about, but your rationalizations are bizarre and invalid.
Great googly moogly.
First of all, your comment about the ads is HILARIOUS. When you see an advertisement for KFC, are you convinced it’s an excellent way to feed your family on a nightly basis?
Second of all, a SHITLOAD of people played Fantasy baseball every day this season, myself included.
Don’t be ignorant.
As far as I know, KFC doesn’t advertise itself as something you should feed your family on a nightly basis. Feel free to direct me to any advertisement they have issued that claims otherwise.
We’re talking about daily fantasy sports. You’re telling me that you didn’t miss one day of daily fantasy from April 5th through October 4th?
From the text of the UIGEA:
(1) Bet or wager.
(E) does not include
(ix) participation in any fantasy…sports game…that meets the following conditions:
(II) All winning outcomes reflect the relative knowledge and skill of the participants and are determined predominantly by accumulated statistical results of the performance of individuals…in multiple real-world sporting or other events.
In season-long fantasy, it is reasonable to claim that “all winning outcomes reflect the relative knowledge and skill of the participants” under the assumption that over the course of a season luck is washed out, even if that isn’t entirely true. There is no way to make the argument that “all” DFS winning outcomes reflect skill. Over time, skill has an absolute effect, but that’s irrelevant based on the actual language of the law.
The state laws that govern skill-based gaming tend to be more specific and have a higher standard than the UIGEA. The only way DFS survives is if states and the feds rewrite their laws, because as currently written, it seems doubtful DFS holds up under legal scrutiny.
Nice analysis Colin. I agree that “all winning outcomes” needing to be skill based is key. I hadn’t seen that phrased discussed before. The exemption for seasonal fantasy meets that requirement – there is only one “winning outcome” per season, and that’s at the end of the season where luck is less a factor. But each individual DFS event has it’s own “winning outcome”, and any one of these could be the result of more luck than skill.
Good job highlighting that. For me, that’s a dispositive clause.
Ok, so just hypothetically, if DFS was restructured so that you committed to playing a minimum number of games at the time of entry, would that satisfy the language here?
I’m genuinely curious. If instead of the contest being truly daily, it was instead made into a block of daily contests which resulted in a single outcome after, say, a month of daily events between the same pool of participants, would that work?
And I say this as pretty impartial to DFS. I stopped playing over a year ago (and actually wouldn’t be allowed to play due to my employment situation even if I wanted to), and don’t really even have much personal interest in it at this point (aside from some of the philosophical questions all these issues raise)
And partly to answer my own question, or even ask another question, is this the logic that poker tournament structures have used to distinguish from table poker (I’m assuming, at this point, unsuccessfully)? If the question is what result is the basis of the payout, it seems pretty empirically easy to show that poker tournaments, as self contained contests, involve more skill than a single poker hand does.
Regardless of who’s right, does anyone think there’s a chance, even a 10% chance, that at some point in the next couple months that accounts will be frozen if the feds intervene?
Anyone who got burned by the poker sites feel my concern, surely.
If there is a chance, then that probability of seizure affects the calculus of your chance of winning.
no chance. Money was frozen in poker accounts because the sites were using the player’s bankrolls like a bank would, and were investing.
FD/DK have coffers in which they can pay out all their earners at once if necessary. This is the one mistake they didn’t make.
Ironically, neither the state nor the DFS sites have anything to gain by making the games more “skill-based.” To maximize revenue, having the contests be as random as possible is what you want, as then even bad players will occasionally win and will keep playing, which is how slot machines are designed. In a game of skill, you get to a situation pretty quickly where the sharks clean the fish out of the pond and the fish stop playing since they’ll almost never win.
DFS on at least FanDuel and DraftKings was designed to NOT be a game of skill, since the prices for players were generally fairly efficient, making it difficult to optimize lineups to win frequently enough to achieve a positive expected value (especially given the super-high rakes on these sites compared to conventional sports betting). More importantly, as long as you spent your salary cap, it was hard to produce a lineup that was significantly worse than an optimized one (barring starting an injured or benched player or a player in a rainout or what have you). The only successful strategies that led to +EV seemed to be those involving submitting dozens of entries to GPP tournaments which was obviously a strategy that most players didn’t have the resources or knowledge to take advantage of. The design of the game itself makes it difficult for it to EVER be a game of skill that would fit most people’s common sense definition.
All that said, I played DFS, found it to be entertaining and think criminalizing it is insane. And given that most regulation of gambling in this country seem to be as much about preventing competition for incumbent casinos/lotteries as anything to do with fairness I’d be skeptical of efforts to improve regulation as well, so I don’t know what the answer is.
I agree that it can be hypocritical for states to ban certain types of gambling and allow others. However, the problem with DFS is that it advertises itself as skill based in terms of your knowledge of baseball, but is basically luck based for anyone who doesn’t have server farms, bots, and high-level algorithms. So people think they have a chance but really don’t.
Now, I would say that’s similar to poker, where many fish think they know what they are doing, but really don’t.
so the players who have more skill win more often, and that’s not fair, so it should be illegal? this is your argument?
“your ability to walk without hurting your feet is luck based for anyone who doesn’t have shoes.”
DFS is luck based for everyone. There is skill involved, but being able to improve your odds by being more skillful is very different from a contest being primarily determined by skill.
If you can actually gain an edge with server farms etc, like you say, than it definitely is a game of skill, not just luck.
I’m not sure how the “the smart players rip off the idiots” argument aligns with the “it’s not a game of skill” argument.
Now if there’s an element where players are being bought ( or refs, or offensive coordinators ), then that’s a completely different thing, but saying that it’s not skill and then saying only the skilled are winning is a contradiction.
I’m still very curious about is the existence of possible winning strategies. It just doesn’t seem like it’s possible to construct a superior strategic framework that encompasses such a small sample size. It doesn’t make sense. It’s just like trying to predict the winner of any one particular baseball game and it doesn’t seem any different than betting on real games.
I feel like all the algo stuff and information edge is just a bunch of hooey. It creates correlation with out causation narratives. Folks who use the algos have other advantages that could just as easily explain their success. Particularly the advantage of capitalization or at least inclination to play multiple entries (it’s doubtful you go to the trouble of creating an algorithm without putting some weight behind it). There’s also the experience that comes with playing each day which can lend insights about how to arbitrage the meta elements of the game like which kinds of contests yield the best results or how to spot and get in to games with player who have shown a propensity for losing.
Certainly there is a basic competency involved in just filling out a roster with players who will be active that day. Understanding the basics of how points are scored. But is there a skill beyond that?
As I write, maybe it occurs to me that there is a skill after all but not the skill that first comes to mind, which is the ability to pick better players than the other guy. Maybe it’s more a skill to exploit the soft spots in the way the payouts and games are structured. Or to exploit weaker players. Or to use the leverage of the “big stack” to use a poker term. Or to just the blocking and tackling of monitoring weather and line up changes. Understanding and anticipating the behavior of crowds and choosing the right contrarian stances (if I understand right this last one was the way in which inside information was used by employees to game the system).
I’m no expert on this, but I saw an interview with an alleged expert, and it sounded like his strategy was to ferret out the really bad players, and play against as many as possible.
The strategy is identical to the stock market: find stocks (players) who are highly likely to outperform their market value and get as many of them as possible, while also attempting to be as unique as possible to avoid sharing profits.
I don’t think it’s possible to find players who are highly likely to outperform their market value. The sample is too small.
I think it’s a reach to say it’s “identical” to the stock market. But to carry the analogy further, the two best ways to make money in the market are alogrithmic trading the relies on arbitrage and exploiting the nature of the market place itself or in long term buy and hold strategies. Just as with DFS, it’s a fools errand to try and anticipate daily behavior of stocks based on thair past technicals.
I really think that the algo DFS model creates confirmation bias. Algos must work because algo players win money. But in reality it is other behaviors and characteristics of the algo player that are at the root of the success.
Terrible analogy time: playing the lottery, but basing your selections on a knowledge of the % of numbers played by other players. Extreme example: avoiding all numeric months (01 through 12) and numeric days of month (13-31), since birthdays are often played. Excluding these numbers doesn’t increase you chance of winning, but it decreases the how much of those winnings you have to share. Now assume that there is no skill involved in setting lineups, but there is skill in identify rarely used players. Close enough analogy?
yeah, i think it is.
I have two issues with DFS.
1) Lack of regulation. Everyone seems to agree this is a major problem. So it’s not worth dwelling on. I will say that in the absence of any legitimate regulation an entity shouldnt be allowed to move as much money as DFS. That’s just a no-brainer. So until there’s legit trustworthy regulation, it should be shut down.
2) Advertising. if you dont think advertising works, I dont know what to tell you. Look at the obesity crisis in this country and where advertising $ are going for SSBs and fast food. DFS is advertised as something anyone can win — my crazy Uncle Bob has a sleeper or X won $130,000 off a $25 investment. Those are outliers but they are posited as real possibilities. Everyone knows that your odds of winning a lottery are minuscule. I dont think people playing DFS know that their odds as a Joe schmo (using the same advice columns >%50 of his competitors are using) are as low as they are. If the majority of winnings are going to like 2% of the players that should be a well known statistic. But it’s not. And that’s a problem.
Lastly, I’ll say that this blog/our discussion has focused solely on DFS for baseball. However, DFS needs to be viewed in the larger context if we’re talking legality.
I think we know that baseball is perhaps the easiest of the sports to quantify when it comes to projections — more so than football certainly. Yet, i imagine baseball is a relatively small piece of the DFS pie – they have NFL, college football, UFC, basketball, etc. Those to me provide a wide varriance of outcomes/skill. And, to talk about DFS as if it’s only about baseball is kind of missing the conversation.
I worked in a state legislature last year (as an intern), and one of the legislatures strait up used a John Oliver video as their testimony on a bill in Committee.
He has more influence in local legislature than you would think from a comedian.
Great points by all commentators. The NY law is fairly restrictive about what is considered to be gambling, and DFS would seem to fall within its criteria. In all likelihood, a NY court is going to issue a restraining order against the DFS sites, prohibiting them from operating within NY or accepting money from NY residents. DFS can then petition for a stay from the courts through the appeals process. During the appeal, DFS will probably lobby the NY state legislature to amend the law to allow DFS to continue to operate in NY.
My own personal thoughts on DFS are that it is gambling, regardless of any skill involved. Of course, I also think that the stock market is also gambling, writ large. As far as regulations go, the larger trading houses can use high volume trading to manipulate stock prices, use high speed trading to increase their take, etc. Not to be cynical, but at the end of the day it’s all the same.
1. In the corporate world, insider trading is a crime. Others might know whether or not the laws would apply to DFS, but if DFS has been riddled with insider trading, that is a much bigger deal than merely “unfair.”
2. False/deceptive advertising is illegal. The author’s claim that “the point of [DFS] is to play the entire season” contradicts how DFS has been marketed. Again, a much bigger deal than being a mere “problem.”
3. The author’s “simple smell test” for skill vs. luck doesn’t pass a simple smell test, because most people targeted by DFS sites (e.g. “turn the game you love into cash”) won’t enter a one-day-only game while failing to complete a roster. In DFS, where many people know to select the obvious values and sleepers, the daily difference-maker is often the one or two minimum-priced players (out of many available) who just happened, by fluke, to have a huge day. That puts DFS closer to luck than skill.