Has Fantasy Football Turned Into Gambling and Insider Trading? [e229]

Legally Sound | Smart Business Archives - Pasha Law PC

Nasir and Matt discuss the scandal involving an employee of DraftKings winning a contest for competitor FanDuel and why this has sparked a discussion on gambling and insider trading. Full Podcast Transcript NASIR: Welcome to our podcast where we cover business in the news and add our legal twist to the business news. My name is Nasir Pasha. MATT: And I’m Matt Staub. NASIR: And we have a huge problem because I have a list of articles that we’re covering but no title so I’ve no idea what we’re doing. Who was responsible for putting the title in? Matt, was that you? MATT: Possibly. You know, I almost wrote something up there and then I didn’t. I usually just copy and paste from an article. So, this is big for you because you’re probably oblivious to… NASIR: Oblivious? MATT: Right now, what do you think is going on where you’re located? Are there any sports happening today? NASIR: You know, what’s funny is – if he’s listening, it’s going to be funny – I was in the elevator with somebody today. He’s like, “Hey, are you going to watch the games tonight?” and I’m like, “What games?” Yeah, as a pure accident, I am aware that the Astros and the Texans are playing – not each other. MATT: No, it’d be interesting. NASIR: It would be interesting, and I saw a bunch of people wearing Texas jerseys out and I’m like, “Man, it’s kind of odd.” It’s like, not Sunday, and I realized it was a Thursday night game. MATT: There’s a Thursday night game every week so the Texans are playing. That’s not that big of a deal but the Astros are in the playoffs. They won the other night in this weird one game wildcard. They’re actually playing right now as we record. I guess both of those games will be going on while we record but I’m guessing you probably can’t name one player on the Astros. NASIR: Of course, I can name one player on the Astros. MATT: I hope you Google and say someone who’s retired. NASIR: Yeah. I mean, isn’t Scott Kazmir going to pitch Game 2 tonight? MATT: Well, it’s Game 1 tonight. NASIR: I mean, that’s what I mean. Oh, no, I meant he’s going to actually pitch Game 2. MATT: It’s possible, yeah. It’s only funny because he’s been on the team for probably a couple of months because he got traded in the middle of the season. NASIR: Oh, yeah, of course, I know. Actually, you know, I know we’re covering fantasy sports but, you know, fantasy football, I get, but fantasy baseball, with so many games per year, that’s too much. MATT: That’s why I led into this sports-related question and I don’t know, I would assume they have some sort of baseball… Fantasy sports, we’re talking about specifically DraftKings and FanDuel which fantasy sports used to be you’d have a team, you’d pick your team, you’d basically go with that team throughout the year, adding or dropping players, making trades. These companies – and I think there are some more out there too but these are probably the two biggest ones – DraftKings and FanDuel – for football, it’s huge because basically what you do, from what I understand – I’ve never played – is you have an allotted amount of money of your salary or your payroll and you pick whatever players in the different positions and you have to come in under the payroll and there’s some contest every Sunday because there’s one game every week per team in NFL. You take the total points and they have this big contest and I think it’s either a million dollars or close to a million dollars for the first place every week. NASIR: At least not FanDuel but… MATT: DraftKings. NASIR: Don’t they advertise a million dollars? MATT: Yeah. I mean, I should know since there’s about a billion commercials between the two, if you watch any sports channels. So, here’s what happened. There was an employee who worked for DraftKings. Like I said, these are two different companies. He worked for DraftKings and I guess he’s privy to some information on, you know, who is selecting what players for this big contest and I’ll get to that ...