A look at what happened recently in the industry of daily fantasy sports, and what to watch for:
New York, New York for DFS
In the wee hours of the morning on Saturday, the New York legislature passed a bill legalizing and regulating the fantasy sports industry in the state.
The cliches being thrown around by lawmakers were numerous in debate when the bill was passed by the Assembly on Friday — “touchdowns” and “penalty flags” were bandied about. Even more cliches could be tossed around for what the Senate accomplished, in what amounted to a buzzer beater in the final few hours of the legislative session for 2016.
All that remains is for Gov. Andrew Cuomo to sign the bill into law.
The importance of the legislative victory for the DFS industry can’t be understated. If the statehouse had failed to pass a bill on Saturday morning, it could have had calamitous effects for FanDuel, DraftKings and everyone else.
Instead, it appears those two companies and many others will be able to re-enter New York, where the legality of the industry had been taken to the courts via action by Attorney General Eric Schneiderman.
PA gets to work
While New York was wrapping up its DFS legislation, Pennsylvania was just getting started this past week.
A bill to regulate the industry cleared a committee vote, and it appears the state will push to get a law enacted this summer.
The DFS bill comes along a lot later than online gambling regulation that has a chance of being passed this year as well.
New sport at DraftKings
In the middle of all the legislative wrangling, DraftKings is set to roll out a new sport:
Get ready… pic.twitter.com/U4ys7kJIlu
— DraftKings (@DraftKings) June 18, 2016
Two of the possibilities:
- The WNBA, whose season is already underway.
- Tennis: Wimbledon starts in a week. It would also make sense given DraftKings’ recent UK launch.
Meanwhile, the fantasy golf vertical seems to have slowed a bit at DraftKings, as it fell 20,000 entries short of filling its Millionaire Maker for the U.S. Open, which had a maximum of 201,000 entries.
