The New York Times featured a story on Thursday questioning this past weekend’s ad blitz by the two big Daily Fantasy Sports companies, FanDuel and DraftKing, with a headline that reads: “An Ad Blitz for Fantasy Sports Games, but Some See Plain Old Gambling”.
Money to sponsor such ads comes from none other than the likes of partners like the NFL, who are dead set against any forms of sports betting and have even sued the state of New Jersey to prevent such activity.
Both companies are valued at more than $1 billion with a reported $27 million spent on approximately 8,000 television spots between the two of them in the opening week of the N.F.L. season, according to data from iSpot.tv, which measures national TV ads.
Perhaps it was that Week 1 ad blitz that has many critics of the industry taking notice, though our sister site Gambling911.com does question a certain Congressman’s motives.
From the New York Times:
Daily fantasy games, with their promises of big payouts — some commercials show fans accepting million-dollar checks — have led critics to describe them as de facto gambling and to call the N.F.L.’s stance hypocritical.
On Monday, Representative Frank Pallone Jr., Democrat of New Jersey, asked Congress to investigate whether the sites had evaded restrictions on online gambling. Last month, a federal appeals court held, in a 2-to-1 decision, that New Jersey’s efforts to allow its casinos and racetracks to take bets on sports events violated the federal Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act, known as Paspa, which was passed in 1992.
“Anyone who watched a game this weekend was inundated by commercials for fantasy sports websites, and it’s only the first week of the N.F.L. season,” Mr. Pallone said in a statement. “These sites are enormously popular, arguably central to the fans’ experience, and professional leagues are seeing the enormous profits as a result. Despite how mainstream these sites have become, though, the legal landscape governing these activities remains murky and should be reviewed.”
– Aaron Goldstein, Gambling911.com