Fantasy sports company refuses to stop college game activity
News on 27 Oct 2015
News on 27 Oct 2015
In what appears to be a response to a NCAA (National Collegiate Athletic Association) demand that it should cease offering fantasy games based on NCAA athletes, legal counsel for daily fantasy sports operator FanDuel has informed the Association that it will not make changes.
Writing to NCAA executive vice president Mark Lewis this week, Fanduel’s legal counsel Christian Genetski maintained that the NCAA has no legal basis for forcing FanDuel to stop its college games because names when tied to statistics aren’t subject to the approval of the athletes and “cannot implicate their amateur status.”
Genetski emphasised that FanDuel will comply with NCAA rules by not using athletes pictures or names in advertisements.
ESPN reports that the NCAA cancelled a meeting with daily fantasy sports companies last week and announced that it will ban DFS adverts from March Madness broadcasts on NCAA events by CBS and Turner Broadcasting.
Earlier this year the Association prohibited the participation of all its athletes in fantasy sports, threatening that non-compliance will result in a year’s suspension .
The NCAA appears to have conflated both daily fantasy sports and traditional seasonal fantasy sports and now regards both as gambling, and Lewis has warned that DFS may violate US laws.
In reply Genetski notes that in a recent court of appeals case (presumably a reference to the US sports leagues vs. New Jersey sports betting legalisation issue) the NCAA claimed that fantasy sports is an activity that “…the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act of 2006 explicitly states does not constitute gambling.”
He also notes that FanDuel’s terms and conditions prohibit athletes in a particular sport from participating in fantasy in that sport, and pledges to comply with an NCAA request that the names of any of its officials who enter fantasy sport contests should be reported, conditional on the Association providing FanDuel with a list of its officials.
