For over 35 years, Fantasy Sports have been an extremely integral part of the professional sports world. Over the years, and more recently, daily fantasy sports have become more and more relevant and have even developed into their own multi-billion dollar industry. Over the past year they have come under scrutiny because people have claimed that these websites, such as FanDuel and Draft Kings, are gambling and should be regulated as such. Although some will argue that daily fantasy sports is all luck and should be considered gambling, many others believe and will argue that it takes more skill than luck to win money on these websites and thus daily fantasy sports should not be considered gambling and should be legal in all 50 states.

Fantasy sports first began in the1960's when Oakland Raiders owner Wilfred Winkenbach laid out the basic idea for fantasy sports. In the 1980's however, the modern day fantasy sports model was invented by Daniel Okrent and his friends at the La Rotisserie Francaise restaurant, hence the name for fantasy sports league "Rotisserie Leagues".  Fantasy sports began to progress over the next few years as technology improved. By the 1990's fantasy sports began to move over to the Internet, which began to expose these sports to new fans, which caused the sports industry to take off. By 2007 it was estimated that almost 30 million people, ages 12 and older, were using online fantasy sports on websites such as ESPN and Yahoo. Daily fantasy sport websites Draft Kings and FanDuel quickly became popular and were much more appealing to fans, because they weren't locked into the same lineup for the whole season. They could have a new lineup each week, which in theory could give them a better chance to win money. In 2015 however, an employee with Draft Kings used information taken from the Draft Kings database to win over $350,000 on FanDuel. This is what ultimately led to the modern day issue of determining whether or not these daily fantasy sports websites should be considered gambling or not. Multiple states, such as Ohio, Nevada, and New York have already gone ahead and filed laws suits against these websites and have deemed them illegal as well.

The two main websites, Draft Kings and FanDuel, have severely changed the landscape of all major professional sports in the United States. In 2014 the number of people who played fantasy sports in North America alone was all the way up to 41 million people, opposed to the 27 million who played in 2009. Leagues such as the NBA and the MLB, have not only endorsed these websites, but they've even gone as far as partnering with these websites in order to maximize profits. "Football teams like the New England Patriots and the Jacksonville Jaguars have set up cocktail lounges in their stadiums where fans can play fantasy sports" (Editorial Board.) These daily fantasy sports have opened up the fan bases of these professional sports teams to a whole new market and each of these leagues is finding ways for them to take full advantage of this new expansion of fans. FanDuel CEO Nigel Eccles points to the data that his company recently discovered that, "once a fan starts playing daily fantasy, his or her weekly sports TV consumption jumps from 17  one-half  hours to 24 hours" (Rovell.)

The first issue when determining whether these daily fantasy sports websites should be considered gambling or not, is with how you interpret the actual definition of gambling. In the legal aspect of the word gambling, there needs to be three elements present: Consideration, Prize, and Chance. The first part of the definition, Consideration, means that the participants must pay something of value to be able to participate in such contest. The second part, Prize, means that the prize must contain something of value which is not limited to money. Both of these elements are present when it comes to daily fantasy sports, but its with the third element, Chance, where the issues arrive. In the legal sense, Chance means that the outcome is not determined by skill. Rick Horrow of U.S News writes, "Anyone who has played fantasy sports knows that you can't just rely on luck to win  --  you need to be able to analyze the sport and identify the right mix of players and match-ups to be successful. And it's not just the big guys who win  --  the games have numerous victors at all levels" (Horrow.) Fantasy sports are significantly different from making a blind wager and hoping that you win. It takes skill and knowledge of the player in order to win money. Horrow then goes to talk about how ever since the first fantasy baseball league, money has always been a proponent of fantasy sports so why all of the sudden are people beginning to take an interest in this issue and want to consider fantasy sports gambling.

According to the Sports Business Journal, 91% of the profits from daily fantasy sports were won by just 1.3% of all users. John Oliver calls this a result of the," number nerds with sophisticated algorithms." Instead of picking players who are your everyday major league stars, the "number nerds" will look at all of their options and figure out players who have a better chance of having an extreme outcome. In his video "Last Week Tonight" John Oliver also comes to the conclusion that because the odds that the everyday casual player has very low statistical odds to beat the so called "number nerds", then that makes it gambling, but that is in fact wrong; it's the other way around. Because that it takes skill for these "number nerds" to succeed in this practice, is basically the definition of it not being gambling. If it was gambling, then all of the players would have similar odds to win, but obviously by the numbers that the Sports Business Journal released, that is not true.

I. Nelson Rose is a big supporter of these daily fantasy sports leagues. He writes that, "A game whose outcome is determined entirely by the skill of the players is simply not gambling" (Rose.) He then goes on to talk about how paying for these leagues is more of an entry fee for a skills competition, and less like a wager. Although these new daily fantasy sports take out the obstacles of being a so called "manager," such as trades, injuries, and bye weeks, that the year long fantasy league possessed, it is still very much a game of skill and less of a game of luck. In 2006, the Government passed the Unlawful Internet Gambling Act of 2006 (UIGEA). This act set a clear baseline for online gambling, and luckily for fantasy sports they were given the "okay" by the Government to carry on in their operations. When it came to fantasy sports actually they said that fantasy sports,

 ... has an outcome that reflects the relative knowledge of the participants, or their skill at physical reaction or physical manipulation (but not chance), and, in the case of a fantasy or simulation sports game has an outcome that is determined predominantly by accumulated statistical results of sporting events ... 

What this quote is saying is that ultimately when it comes to fantasy sports, it requires the skill and knowledge of the players to win, unlike gambling where it is pure luck for you to win.

Ever since the controversy with the employee from Draft Kings using the data from that website to win on FanDuel, the websites have come under a lot of scrutiny from the public. On Thursday October 13th, 2015 the state of Nevada ordered for websites like Draft Kings and FanDuel to stop operating in the state immediately. The state regulators ruled that daily fantasy sports should be considered gambling and that they could not resume business until the companies received their state gambling licenses. At this point, it had been the biggest setback for the daily fantasy sports community. The two-multi billion dollar companies have been working under the exemption from the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act of 2006, which allowed fantasy sports to continue to operate under this new Act, but banned things like normal sports betting and online poker. David Gzesh, who is a Nevada lawyer that specializes in gambling and sports law, said that, "The Nevada Gaming Commission concluded that daily fantasy is gambling and needs to be licensed here. It should give other states pause because if it's perceived as sports gambling here, no other state can offer it when it violates federal law" (Gzesh.) Nevada obviously has the most to lose in this modern day age of fantasy sports because it is more attractive to the younger generation than coming to Las Vegas for it casinos.

One big supporter of the idea that fantasy sports should be considered gambling is Timothy Fong, an associate clinical professor of psychiatry at UCLA and co-director of the UCLA gambling studies program. Fong says that,

From the moment a player signs up for an account, the experience of playing daily fantasy sports is gambling. He or she opens an online account, deposits real money and then voluntarily places wagers on games with the aim of winning money. Players are well aware that they can lose their entry fee, which can range from $1 up to $10,000. The volume of choices of games is staggering and varies from tournaments to leagues to head-to-head, and these games use gambling-related language "winner take all, high-paying contests" and "turn $20 into $2 million." Players may or may not watch the games, but the end result of winning or losing money feels the same whether it's lost in daily fantasy sports or at a blackjack table, slot machine or sportsbook.

Although Fong makes a compelling point for the reasons why fantasy sports should be considered gambling, when it comes to the legal aspect of the definition gambling, the third element of gambling, Chance, is not present here. Even Fong goes on to later discuss in his article that there is emerging evidence that clearly shows that daily fantasy sports is a game of skill. But Fong claims that this is not where the controversy lies. He said the problem with daily fantasy sports is how do you classify them. He believes that daily fantasy sports are very similar to online poker and should be regulated as such. But compared to daily fantasy sports websites, the online poker sites do not compare to the amount of revenue that the daily fantasy websites do. Fong also discusses that with the new entertaining ways of gambling, the threat of gambling addiction arises. There are so many different methods of playing and ways to win (or lose) money that people might become absorbed in these new forms of games and before they know it they'll lose control and end up losing extreme amounts of money. Fong also believes however that if there is more studies done on these daily fantasy websites and other forms of online gambling, where we can better observe and study the effects of them, then maybe one day there can be a safe roadmap for the industry to follow that is helpful to all who use the websites.

With the beginning of states starting to ban the two main daily fantasy sports websites, it could be disastrous to the sporting community. In recent years, fan bases have severely increased and the population that watches the sports has sky rocketed as well. If you take away the aspect of daily fantasy sports, it could mean huge loses to the organizations and the professional leagues. Although it can be argued that daily fantasy sports, and other fantasy sports like it should be considered gambling, when it comes to the nature of the law, the third element of gambling, Chance, which is defined as the outcome not relying on skill, that is where the problem arises. Gambling and daily fantasy sports should not be comparable. In daily fantasy sports it takes time and experience to go through each week and find the best possible lineup that will maximize a persons profit. When it comes to daily fantasy sports, they should not be considered gambling and they should be legalized in all 50 states without having to be regulated.
