Chances are that if you watched almost any National Football League game this previous fall you will have seen an advertisement for two of the major daily fantasy sports companies. These two companies, FanDuel and DraftKings, are the key players in the fantasy sports industry that has taken the United States by storm over the past few years. They operate as online gambling websites that reward individuals for "skilled guessing" and are legal in a majority amount of the state's due to an outdated online gambling law. The "Unlawful Internet Gambling Act" written in 2006 explains that fantasy sports are not considered gambling, however this was written long before daily fantasy sports came into play.  Over the past few years, the daily fantasy sports industry has grown exponentially due to running as an unregulated, profit-thirsty industry. However, if strict laws and regulations are not put in place to control this online gambling industry then it could lead to major gambling addictions, faultiness of professional sports, and the rising of illegal sports betting rings in the United States. However, under the current laws this industries operates legally and has been that way for over ten years since the law was written. If the daily fantasy sports industry is not regulated then it will continue to function as a vigilante industry that finds profit through outdated laws.

To first provide some history of fantasy sports as a whole, this business began in 1995 when several sports media companies had begun to offer fantasy sports on the Internet. These sports media companies recognized that they could very easily bring together sports fans from around the world and provide statistical upkeep services for fantasy leagues (Edelman 3). Right around the start of 2000, several sources showed that college students across America that had fulltime access to the Internet were betting regularly on the results of sporting events from all types of online sports books, many of which were located outside of the United States. In the current time period the state of the fantasy sports industry is that there are one week leagues, one day leagues, and you can even bet on whether or not Lebron is going to make or miss the next shot he takes. These new "fantasy sports companies" have found a loophole in the written law in order to maximize profits. The law they rely on is the "Unlawful Internet Gambling Act" of 2006. This law's major goal was to stop credit cards companies from facilitating bets online, however in that year no one could have predicted fantasy sports would go from local, friendly season long competition to the billion dollar daily business it is today. The key two pieces of information in this bill are that the definition of "gambling" is whether or not the activity relies more on skill than luck and that the fight over the legality of fantasy sports was placed in state by state hands rather than federally. So the current state of this business as a whole is that daily fantasy sports have boomed faster than any legislature or person for that matter predicted, therefore leaving the law in an outdated position and allowing the major companies to run themselves unregulated.

At the current state that these daily fantasy sports companies are running themselves, they can only be held accountable to the voluntary acts of their customers. According to the CEO and founder of the company FanDuel, Richard Koch, "Our Company is gaining twenty to thirty thousand new users a day!" Something like this goes to show how quickly these sites are growing and how large of an industry this billion dollar business has become. On top of that it is a fact that no other industry or business has ever put the amount of money into advertising on television that the companies FanDuel and DraftKings has. They received partnerships with up to 28 MLB teams, the NFL, ESPN, ABC, NBC, and the list goes on. (The Fantasy Sports Gamble)  The biggest shock to sports fans was to see professional sports leagues partnering up with these companies because since the beginning of sports these leagues have always been against betting on sports. According to one of the leading all-time winners on FanDuel, Bryce Morrow, "On average 89% of people lose everyday on these sites and a majority of the people who play are rookies or beginners unlike myself and the other sharks that compete on here. The sharks are made up of a lot of ex-poker players because when they could not gamble on Poker online anymore after that law in 2001 had been past than poker was no longer an option and they flocked to daily fantasy sports" (The Fantasy Sports Gamble). Looking at the chain of events one can conclude that this new "legal" industry that has been invaded by lots of ex-professional online gamblers is definitely on the same level as gambling. However, what is the problem with gambling one may ask? Why not just let them play these online games?

According to an addictive behavior study done by two Harvard graduate students, Ryan Martin and Sarah Nelson, "Those participated in fantasy sports for money were significantly more likely to experience one or more gambling-related problems than fantasy sports participants who did not play for money." These gambling addiction can destroy someone's life and with the ability to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on single day league, the prospect of getting addicted is even more dangerous. "Students who participated in fantasy sports had higher rates of experiencing gambling-related problems, and that this relationship was particularly strong for females ...  This finding is consistent with gender-specific findings in other traditionally male activities. For instance, DUI-related research has found that repeat DUI offenders are approximately 80% male, but the repeat DUI offenders who are women have more severe psychiatric comorbidity than male offenders" (Martin and Nelson).This finding from the study is particularly interesting because over eighty percent on online fantasy sports league users are male just like the correlation to DUI-related activities as stated in the study. Alcoholism is real, alcohol addiction is real, and if the facts show that people, specifically females that are repeat DUI offenders, have more sever psychiatric comorbidity as a result what's to say that won't happen to fantasy sports players. Although this may seem a stretch according to their study the parts of the brain that react to addiction have very few discrepancies between alcohol and gambling. These games are just as addictive and gambling addictions have the potential to be as destructive as a DUI can be to someone's life. In an article written in the New York Times by Bogdanich and Williams they interviewed a gambling addict named Joshua Adams about the new daily fantasy sports craze. He told them, "It would be like taking an alcoholic downtown and finding out about a whole new street of bars that he never knew about  --  exciting, great bars," he said. "For an addict, it wasn't what I needed." Mr. Adams said he had lost $20,000 in daily fantasy games and tens of thousands more in illegal sports bets. His life, consumed by gambling, disintegrated to where he considered suicide" (The Gamble on Fantasy Sports). Joshua Adams was forced to consider suicide after losing all he had to this new "fun and exciting" industry known as daily fantasy sports. Everyone agrees that gambling addiction is and many people do not agree that daily fantasy sports is gambling, however if they both have utterly similar effects how can there be no relationship?

One of the other largest arguments against daily fantasy sports and the sports betting industry is that it can falter real life games and lead to the "fixing" of real life sports events. One of the earliest and most famous fixed sports scandals is known popularly as the Black Sox Scandal or Eight Men Out. "The Black Sox scandal is the name given to the conspiracy to fix the 1919 World Series played between the Chicago White Sox and the Cincinnati Reds. A number of players on the Chicago franchise conspired with gamblers to throw (intentionally lose) games in what is the biggest scandal in major league history" (Baseball Reference). This is a prime example of sports betting getting extremely out of hand and on a national scale, the show that if something as large as the World Series of professional baseball is capable of being thrown just to make some money what's to say that cannot happen in daily fantasy sports. Daily fantasy sports put themselves in a position to be fixed very easily and potentially screw up the integrity of professional sports leagues as a whole. Do not forget how easily one athlete's career could go down the drain as well. All it would take is one superstar to throw a game and someone with insider information could profit on exponential levels because of it. This problem would be very hard to catch in the scheme of a say 162 game season like the MLB or and 82 game season like the NBA. One stud pitcher has a "bad game" or last week's leading scorer in the NBA suddenly "can't make a shot" are all very believable and difficult to directly rule as match fixing. Overall, with the continuation of these betting fantasy sites, thee sports could become poisoned and the fixing of them only more of a reality.

Sports betting first began on a very small local scale, however as society and sports have evolved so have the way that people bet on these sports. Sports betting is illegal and criminalized in the United States of America, yet many people still find a way to do it through an illegal bookmaker (more popularly known as a bookie) as well as off-shore internet gambling websites. In an interview in the Frontline documentary "The Fantasy Sports Gamble" computer analyst Doug Medori explained that "Before daily fantasy sports came out, people would bet on these websites illegally that tried to fight the law by using offshore headquarters." When daily fantasy sports came into play however, people switched their focus to that because their past favorite illegal activity suddenly became legal. The transition from people with backgrounds in illegal activities coming into the daily sports betting industry provides further detailed explanation as to why this industry should be classified as gambling and needs to be federally regulated.

For as many arguments as to why daily fantasy sports should be illegal, people will always come up with examples as to why this new phenomena should be legal. Carol Roth, freelance writer for Entrepreneur explains, "When it comes to DFS or online poker or even to games of pure chance, the reality is that there is no infringing about those that infringes on any third party. Your consequences are your own. If you win, you may find yourself better off. If you lose, you may find the loss worth the entertainment value. You may even become worse off, but that should be your decision to make and your risk to calculate." Her argument relies on that people should be forced to make decision knowing that their direct consequences are their own responsibilities. However, with such a huge problem such as gambling addition out there, it is wrongful for the government to not take action against such a business that could ruin anyone's finances if one gets too invested or addiccted. These decisions and consequences are not always made with clear thoughts especially if one is an addict. On DraftKings website they explain why these sport games are legal with, "The legality of daily fantasy sports is the same as that of season long fantasy sports. Federal Law and 42 of the 50 US States allow skill based gaming. Daily fantasy sports is a skill game and is not considered gambling." This law, covered earlier, only allows daily fantasy sports because of their so-called skill. Some other apps twist that law so much that you are able to bet on whether or not a team may score in the first inning or quarter. The skill required to do is probably equivalent to just pure luck. Even on some of the advertisements that FanDuel and DraftKings present on television provide examples of people who have played and won tens of thousands of dollars on just their first day playing. Look at the facts here, if a company is selling an image to the public that just about anyone can go online and make a few picks then walk away with an absurd amount of money, where is the skill in that? Is that not word for word close to the definition of luck? 

A new proposal to this corrupt, unregulated industry would be federally regulate it and criminalize the direct sports betting industry in a similar fashion to the online poker regulations that took place in 2001. With this new proposal, the daily fantasy sports industry would be reduced to a business that people can only play daily sports only for play money and not real money. The online poker law regulations state that this type of gambling is legal in very few states and under strict circumstances. The United States of America should not promote a culture of gambling addiction and sports betting under the legal umbrella, but rather adjust the current laws to control this growing epidemic. According to uspokersites.us "Only Nevada, New Jersey and Delaware (with Pennsylvania and California as a potential very soon) have done it so far (you must live in each state)." If cautions and regulation like these were taken place for the daily fantasy sports industry then many Americans would avoid gambling debt and addiction as well as betting on sports illegally.

As a whole, the argument that is fighting to harshly regulate and control the daily fantasy sports industry is one that comes with strong reasoning and backup information defending it. The evolution of fantasy sports took quite some time but as time went on so did the speed of this industry's evolution. As the internet came along, fantasy sports boomed and before many people knew it daily fantasy sports was on the market. Back in 2006, the illegal sports betting industry was getting out of hand so congress was forced to propose the "Unlawful Internet Gambling Act". This law, related to fantasy sports, stated that as long the factor of skill was larger than luck then fantasy sports shall remain legal. However, this law was written a few years before daily betting sites began to pop up, allowing these daily companies to slide right under the law's nose with their cheap gambling deals. The daily game sites are so large that they are gaining thousands and thousands of new members each day. On top of that they began partnering with many of the major sports associations in America, who ironically are extremely against sports gambling. The possible arguments against the illegality of this business state that people should be allowed to spend their money the way they choose to and that if the current law allows it and the majority amount of people enjoy it then why change the system that works. This profit thirsty industry has run unregulated and needs to change or else bad effects would come into play. Strict laws and regulations are needed to control this online gambling industry or else it could lead to major gambling addictions, match fixing of professional sports, and the rising of illegal sports betting rings in the United States. The negative side of keeping this industry legal outweigh the positive side in a clear cut fight of cold hard facts. State governments and the federal government must come together to control this vigilante industry or else suffer the corruption of all participants including players and sports organizations.  

