After being the hot topic throughout the Global Gaming Expo, sweeps and DFS 2.0 were again on the agenda of a recent webinar hosted by members of the Indian Gaming Association (IGA) and the California Nations Indian Gaming Association (CNIGA).
On the latest episode of iGaming Daily, Jessica Welman, Editor of SBC Americas, sat down with Charlie Horner, SBC’s Media Manager, to look back on what was discussed during the webinar.
Late last year, the California Attorney General’s office commissioned an opinion on fantasy sports, which could put at risk the operations of DFS operators in the state such as DraftKings and FanDuel.
During the webinar, James Siva, Executive Director of CNIGA, claimed that DFS is illegal in California but the state allows operators like FanDuel and DraftKings to offer the vertical.
On the current situation in California, Charlie said: “You can hear the vested interests loud and clear here. If you have the likes of FanDuel and DraftKings offering their products in California, they’re going to have a reasonable amount of confidence that what they’re doing there is all above board.
“You can understand from the tribes perspective that they have the complete opposite opinion and they’re going to fight their corner tooth and nail and make sure that they’re winning not just the legal battle, but the PR battle as well.”
As well as the regulators, the tribes have also taken their fight to Google and Apple, who they claim are enabling illegal gambling by listing the gaming apps on their respective app stores.
On whether this could make a difference, Charlie said: “I think at the end of the day it is going to come down to money. If those app stores are making money out of these apps being on their platforms, It’s going to take a lot of persuading for them to move.
“[However], if those letters do have some sway then they will be able to move a lot faster than the state and Attorney General’s office in terms of being able to pull those apps. So from the tribe’s perspective, it’s a smart move and a way of potentially getting a faster course of action than going down the legal route.”
After a short break, the attention of the show then turned to a recent study from the NCAA which found that college athletes are being subjected to widespread public abuse on social media from “angry sports bettors”.
Although the data is concerning, Jess explained that there have been efforts on social media to deflect from the findings.
She said: “[There has been] a weird backlash on social media where people are just like well everybody’s awful, don’t blame it on sports bettors and I’m just like ‘is that really how you want to approach this?’ To not even concede that it’s a problem lands really poorly with me.”
The NCAA has repeatedly called for a nationwide ban on individual prop bets for college athletes and to end the episode the duo considered whether this could be the turning point to make regulators and operators support this point of view.
“Surely if you’re exposing these young players into arenas of thousands of people and you’ve got thousands of people betting on them at home that’s a lot of pressure and you could probably do without the abuse that some of these players are receiving,” said Charlie.
“So any way that we can minimise that, I don’t see that as a bad thing. The operators aren’t going to voluntarily pull those markets but it’s going to take collective action.”
Jess agreed and added that she doesn’t understand why pulling these markets is a “contentious issue” given that college prop markets make up approximately only 1% of an operator’s betting handle.
