Draftking And Fanduel Single Game MLB Contests
Nobody can say that DraftKings and FanDuel aren’t companies run by execs with some guts – not after their announcement of new single game daily fantasy contests in time for Major League Baseball’s opening day.
The biggest names in the burgeoning daily fantasy sports (DFS) industry have decided to walk right up to the edge of the line separating what everyone from fans to gaming experts say constitutes “sports betting” from “games of skill” with their newest offering. DraftKings’ single game option, gets the appropriately awesome moniker Showdown, while FanDuel’s competing (companion?) product does without any fancy sobriquet, but both of them are functionally the same anyway so it doesn’t really matter much all that much. At any rate, both newly announced contest types are variations on what DraftKings and FanDuel have been doing for some time now on their NFL and NBA single game contests since the former league’s playoffs began late last year.
In case you’re wondering “What gives?” when comes to why it took so long before the two big dogs of the DFS world adapted this model for MLB games, the answer should be fairly obvious. That being, the whole proposition is fairly dubious at best from a legally allowable perspective, or at least it seems to be. There are DFS laws in the states that clear up this confusion, but the real issue at hand is how one single game can contain multiple “events,” as required by the overarching (though we agree they are equally overreaching federal laws).
What makes daily fantasy contests like this somewhat questionable – but ultimately and apparently permissible under the current scheme of federal anti-sports betting laws – is the way in which they focus on single games only. This makes them stand in fairly stark contrasts to contests that take place across multiple real world games happening on the same day, to say nothing of fantasy sports’ initial emphasis on contest spanning a whole season. However, it is unclear to us how DraftKings’ and FanDuel’s legal teams were confident enough their companies’ newly minted MLB single game contests only toe the line of what is and isn’t acceptable according to the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act of 2006 (UIGEA).
That law, which contains the provision that DFS contests must “consist of multiple real-world sporting or other events,” was used as the primary defense against the bludgeon of federal prosecutor scrutiny of the DFS industry. While it might seem odd that DraftKings and FanDuel would take such a big chance – until you consider the potential for the money to be made, that is. The companies report that more than a million of DraftKing’s estimated 9 million subscribers took part in the single game contests offered on the most recent edition of the Super Bowl, for instance.
It is pure speculation on our part, we think the decision to offer products like Showdown at the conclusion of the NFL season may have been a case of “get what you can, if you can, while you can” on the part of operators. Pro football drives the majority of their business, after all, so it is conceivable that the company’s wanted to dip their toes in the water while they stood the chance to make the most money possible before diversifying their portfolio with NBA and now MLB contests.
Because Showdown has a cooler name – or any kind of name at all - we will stick to describing how the DraftKings single game baseball contests work for a quick minutes. The system couldn’t be simpler, as all an account holder needs to do is adhere to the tried and true salary cap method for selecting a team composed of players from both teams in a preset matchup – in this case it will be the game set for 7 p.m. next Thursday (April 5) between the San Francisco Giants and the Los Angeles Dodgers.
Basically, if you’re interested in getting in on the action at DraftKings in time for this particular ballgame on opening day, all you’ll need to do is pick a fantasy lineup made up of six athletes called “flex players” in the DK terminology. These players will serve as your fantasy lineup’s hitters and pitchers based on preset salaries assigned to each of the athletes during the draft process. DraftKings is reportedly planning to offer its Showdown DFS contests on most Sunday Night Baseball matchups scheduled for the 2018 season, and the company is already guaranteeing two contests with a $30,000 payout each, and seven others with payouts of at least $15,000.
FanDuel’s as yet unnamed single game DFS contests work almost exactly the same as DraftKings’ do, but there are a few areas in which the two company’s offerings differ that are worth pointing out for players that want to participate on Opening Day. If you’re a FanDuel user, you will need to pick five players, one of which is the lineup’s designated “MVP” (who has their points count 50 percent more or 1 ½ times as much as a normal player’s score), a single infielder, one outfielders and any two batters. Also unlike DraftKing’s Showdown, the biggest payout of the FanDuel single game contest slate so far is $15,000 guaranteed, but that amount probably reflects more on FanDuel’s status as the second fiddle in the industry to its chief rival and not any lack of belief in the success of its product.
That last pertinent factoid is worth pointing out, because it is quite clear that, legal gray areas associated with this kind of contest – to say nothing of the whole industry’s shaky standing in the grand scheme of gambling law in this country - notwithstanding, the DFS companies are doing just fine. Their numbers are way up year over year in spite of the intense pressure being brought to bear on them from the feds and even some states and despite last year’s failed attempt to merge into one organization ended in threats of antitrust hearings. Most American sports fans don’t care one way or the other about sports betting, and it’s probably fair to say that the practice of wagering on sports will be legal nationwide sooner rather than later.
This is especially since the U.S. Supreme Court could return a decision in favor of striking down the Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act of 1992 (PASPA) literally any day now. The folks at DraftKings and FanDuel and the best USA sportsbooks are no doubt watching the New Jersey SCOTUS case very closely indeed, as the seemingly imminent fall of PASPA would in all likelihood presage the dissolution of the UIGEA as well. And once that domino effect begins, it will pretty much be open season on any kind of daily fantasy sports activity DraftKings and FanDuel and other, smaller companies can dream up – and that would be a win for just about everybody.