NY bans FanDuel & DraftKings

JetFan79 said:

Sure the lotto exists. But c'mon there's a huge difference between the lotto and full fledged gambling. Could you drop your life's savings or Timmy's college fund on lotto tickets?.. sure but who does?

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Lots of people. Ever get stuck in line at a convenience store behind some ******* that's orders varying multiples of most every type scratch ticket?

Cutting into Lottery earnings, I suspect.
Nevada already banned it.

I hope this move helps derail all the shows/material now inundating us.
Sunday AM on ESPN Radio, once Lupica's pretty darn good show
is now fantasy football.
Ack.

The tie in to the advertising feels dirty.

There will be more crap, scandals from it.
Too much loose money flying around for any other result.

This player or that is benched. Is it random?
Why did the good player on the bum team drop that pass?
Endless questions, all erode confidence.

How could anyone possibly "police" it, or know?
NFL should seriously distance itself from this.

Obviously ESPN is all in, why leave billions on the table?

The plantation owners better think twice.
They may feel untouchable, that they can't break their toy.
Wrong.

XLIX said:

That's a poor analogy. A better analogy would be the federal government legalizing marijuana (which they essentially have) but an individual state saying "not here, fellas."

The laws on the books in NY are clear. Gambling on sports is illegal. All the AG did was decide that hey, DFS fall under that blanket. And he's right. Also, he is not the first. Nevada made the same declaration a couple weeks ago. There are now 6 or 7 states which have outlawed DFS's. I expect eventually every single state will recognize DFS's are gambling. Some will decide to allow it, some will forbid it, but all will regulate it.

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The states legalizing marijuana is done through legislation, that analogy doesn't support you.

The law on the books in NY is not "gambling on sports is illegal."

PatsDeb said:

The market is so saturated with their ads, they obviously know this is going to happen and they are just milking it for all it's worth while they can.

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Bob and Jerry only had a 20+% increase in their teams net worth this year and were hoping that their fantasy connections and NFL influence would up that to 30+%. Otherwise they'd be losing 10%.

JetFan79 said:

No need to apologize for the rant. Refreshing view and I agree. Lemme know when ya run for office. Got my vote.

Some Jet fans ask why I post on a Pats board. Simple answer. Some smart dudes around here.

Now if I could just get ya to support the Jets, you guys would be geniuses.

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I used to support the Jets. Joe Willie shutting up those NFLers was my favorite non-Pats moment of all time. The Chiefs win the next year was second. Then came the Jets/Parcells bullcrap in 1995 and all of that changed. It has only gotten worse since.

Problem gambling has social costs, though I would be careful about the claim that "casinos cause poverty." But the public foots the bill for bankruptcies, and it invariably has some effect on aggregate productivity. It also tends to affect the poor rather than the rich. There's a reason the public, in the form of the government, involves itself in gambling beyond just wanting revenue.

I don't know when this thread veered into polygamy, but to assume that polygamy would result in "abuse of women" seems to accept that it would inevitably be one man marrying multiple women. I'm sort of anti marriage as a civil status altogether, but I don't necessarily see anything wrong with polygamy in a society where there is generalized equality among sexes.

Bobsyouruncle said:

So, they didn't bother with the whole voting and democracy thing?

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Well, you vote for AG. So, if you voted for an anti-gambling AG then the people have, in fact, spoken. That's how a representative democracy works.

seven said:

Cutting into Lottery earnings, I suspect.
Nevada already banned it.

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Nope. They just want the DFS sites to get a licence to operate a gambling site in their state. They've temporarily banned them until their paperwork goes through.

Bobsyouruncle said:

I suspect this never happened.

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I'm not a season ticket holder, but I generally get to 1 or 2 games a year and bounce around the stadium (200s and 300s anyway) and I can honestly say I have never seen this happen.

QuantumMechanic said:

The NY law says that an activity is gambling if chance is a "material element" of the activity (and note that's a lower bar than many other states have).

The question of whether or not chance is a "material element" of DFS is not some obvious black and white thing. It's a matter of interpretation that reasonable people can reach different conclusions on. This AG has reached a different conclusion than the previous AG. Or perhaps this AG was the first AG to even to bother to consider it.

In any event, it is completely within the purview of an AG to take action based on his interpretation of the laws unless and until a court interprets the law otherwise.

Presumably FanDuel and DraftKings will challenge this in court and then we'll see how judges interpret what chance as a "material element" means in the realm of DFS.

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So by your interpretation could the AG define sugar as a mind altering drug that is banned if he felt like it?

Can he ban the stock market because chance is just as much a material element?

There is no need to have a legislature if the AGs purview is as broad as people claim.

Bobsyouruncle said:

So by your interpretation could the AG define sugar as a mind altering drug that is banned if he felt like it?

Can he ban the stock market because chance is just as much a material element?

There is no need to have a legislature if the AGs purview is as broad as people claim.

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He could ban sugar or the stock market, if there's no exception for the stock market for instance written into the law. Presumably, the legislature would then meet and immediately pass a more narrow law. Or the interpretation would be challenged in a court, and very likely struck down. This is how common law works. Courts have broad authority to interpret statutes and create standing law.

The power of the person of the Attorney General is checked by elections (one imagines banning sugar would not be great for his electoral prospects!) and by the legislature, who can pass a new law or vote to recall the Attorney General, and by the executive (the Governor, in this case), who can fire him.

patman52 said:

Gun laws only hamper law abiders?

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An oversimplification of the general point, but yes. If you doubt this, see Chicago for an easy demolition of your position.

patman52 said:

So if your local non convicted crack dealer wanted a full auto ak47 and armour piercing shells he should just be able to walk into walmart sunday morning? I am also a shotgun owner, and gun laws hamper the ability of criminals to gain access and to the sophistication of the weapons they have.

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Gun laws prevent law abiding citizens from getting guns. They don't prevent lawbreakers from getting guns. They simply drive those people further underground.

Now, back to Fanduel/Draftkings.

Bobsyouruncle said:

So by your interpretation could the AG define sugar as a mind altering drug that is banned if he felt like it?

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He can do whatever he wants no matter how crazy it is. The questions are (a) whether or not his decision will be upheld when challenged and (b) does he want to take on the political consequences of his actions.

As for practicalities and how likely he would be do to something like that, it depends on how the law that defines bannable drugs is written. If the law says "Bannable drugs are those on this list: drug X, drug Y, and all narcotics" then he's very likely not to try because there's no way his interpretation could possibly be upheld.

If, instead, the law has some broad, weasely qualifier in it like "substances which can be considered harmful" then he may decide to try. Maybe he can convince a court to agree that sugar is harmful enough to trigger that clause of the law.

Bobsyouruncle said:

Can he ban the stock market because chance is just as much a material element?

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Similar answer, though with the complication that federal regulation of the stock market might pre-empt state regulation via the US constitution's Supremacy Clause.

Bobsyouruncle said:

There is no need to have a legislature if the AGs purview is as broad as people claim.

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You realize that it is longstanding vanilla US and state law that the executive branch essentially gets to interpret statutes as it sees fit unless and until a court says the executive branch's interpretation is incorrect? This is nothing new at all.

primetime said:

The power of the person of the Attorney General is checked by elections (one imagines banning sugar would not be great for his electoral prospects!) and by the legislature, who can pass a new law or vote to recall the Attorney General, and by the executive (the Governor, in this case), who can fire him.

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This is the internet so nitpicking is required

Assuming the NY AG is an elected official it is extremely unlikely that the governor has the power to fire him.

I would imagine the checks are (a) voting him out the next time he's up for election, (b) voting to recall if NY allows for recall elections, and (c) the legislature impeaching him.

Bobsyouruncle said:

The states legalizing marijuana is done through legislation, that analogy doesn't support you.

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Of course it does because you keep trying to point to federal law to suggest that the NY AG is "ruling by fiat." The whole point is just because federal law allows DFS's doesn't mean every single state cannot have their own laws forbidding it.

Bobsyouruncle said:

The law on the books in NY is not "gambling on sports is illegal."

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Yes, it is. Sports gambling is a subset of the types of gambling which are illegal in NY. And the AG looked at DFS's, did an investigation and determined that DFS's fell under that category.

I can't really say I disagree with him.

I live in NY. Does this mean I won't be bombarded with DFS ads anymore, or are they still going to play them for our more gambling-friendly NJ brethren?

smurfalarm said:

I live in NY. Does this mean I won't be bombarded with DFS ads anymore, or are they still going to play them for our more gambling-friendly NJ brethren?

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You'll still see just as many in the national NFL broadcasts, but I imagine local sports broadcasts (Knicks, Nets, Rangers, etc) will stop showing them because there's no sense advertising something that the majority of the viewing audience can't "buy."

However I don't know if their analytics would say the Jersey population watching those games is worth the advertising investment. I suppose that is possible.

jays52 said:

The shakedown begins.

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This..NY politicians are angry because they haven't figured out a way to tax FF. So, instead they will extort the $$$ out of them by banning it and then 'make a deal' in a few weeks.

QuantumMechanic said:

This is the internet so nitpicking is required

Assuming the NY AG is an elected official it is extremely unlikely that the governor has the power to fire him.

I would imagine the checks are (a) voting him out the next time he's up for election, (b) voting to recall if NY allows for recall elections, and (c) the legislature impeaching him.

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Good point. The governor can introduce a motion to impeach to the legislature, I believe, but not fire by fiat as he could with an appointee. Regardless, there's plenty of checks.