U.S. university study concludes DFS is a skill activity

The Journal of Sports Science will soon carry a scientific study carried out by academics at the Kansas State University which demonstrates that successful daily fantasy sports activity requires a significant skill element that places it outside the common definition of gambling.

Lead by Professor Todd Easton and co-author Sarah Newell, the study used computer modelling to show that skill outweighed chance in the study, which compared the success of skilled players vs unskilled participants.

In their conclusions, the researchers claim unequivocally that the results show that daily fantasy sports are not games of chance, and that “unskilled participants never win at DFS. With extremely high probability, all DFS winners have skill.”

The team found that the disparity in the results of unskilled vs. skilled was such that they wrote: “The most astonishing result is that not a single (unskilled) team won a pay-out. It is difficult to truly comprehend the extreme rarity of losing all 35 contests. This is less likely than a single ticket winning the Powerball. It is less likely than flipping a coin and getting heads 28 times in a row. It is 300 times less likely than being struck by lightning this year.”

In a game where chance predominates, there would have been a far less significant difference in skilled vs.unskilled results, the researchers argue