So, yesterday morning, I had planned and actually started writing a post promoting a Week 5 Crossing Broad only Draft Kings league with 150 entrants and a $750 prize pool, with anyone who beat me also receiving a $25 gift card to the store. We did this in Week 1 and filled four 50-person leagues and 65 people received gift cards to the store.

And then shit hit the fan.

A New York Times piece detailed a Draft Kings employee who won $350,000 on FanDuel in Week 3. It alleged that he used player ownership data available to him for his role at Draft Kings – content manager – to construct his FanDuel team. Specifically, he would’ve known which players were or were not highly owned. [As we’ve noted before, winning in the big leagues – with huge entrant and prize pools – is always about finding diamond-in-the-rough players.] In a statement, Draft Kings denied that the employee had received any information prior to his lineup locking on FanDuel, and this morning Draft Kings CEO Jason Robins doubled down on that assertion in an interview on FOX Business (a highly ballsy move if he wasn’t absolutely certain that was the case). He also said Draft Kings is bringing in outside help to monitor compliance, and that employees, who were already not allowed to play on Draft Kings, will no longer be allowed to play on competitor sites. As I write this, Fan Duel just released a statement saying basically the same thing.

Robins also detailed compliance processes that were already being implemented. Anecdotally, I can confirm that curiously tight information sharing processes were already in-place. Last month, when I requested the contact information – emails – for the people who beat me in our Week 1 contest so I could send them gift card codes, I was told I could receive them only through a secure file transfer, per compliance procedures– which I assure you is an absolute first doing this. So I don’t doubt the claim that they were already in the process of implementing tighter controls– I was only requesting 64 email addresses, for our own audience. Also anecdotally, the folks at Draft Kings, some of whom we’ve worked with for years, have been nothing but a pleasure to deal with, and the invoicing process – we get paid for referrals – has been among the most seamless and trouble-free in my years of dealing with advertisers and sponsors in this and other roles. The notion that Draft Kings and FanDuel are part of some massive fraud is completely without merit. MLB, the NBA, NFL owners, the Sixers – all backers or partners of Draft Kings or FanDuel – have entirely too much at stake to be backing a giant scheme being carried out on sports fans everywhere. A good, smart business built to maximize profits and player retention? Yes. A fraud? No.

None of this is a good look, for sure, but it’s also part of the growing pains of a booming industry– daily fantasy sports, a space that really couldn’t have existed before smart phones, is a genuinely a more fun alternative to season-long leagues. There are valid questions that have been raised, particularly as it relates to the big-money leagues, which are obviously much harder to win, where expert data, or a lot of luck, is required for success.* As such, you can bet there will be more transparency and safeguards to prevent fraudulent behavior. Will they be perfect? Probably not. Anyone have their money in stocks or a 401k? Think that system is perfect? When big money is involved there will always be the possibility for corruption. But I’m not so sure this particular story is even that– it sounds more like an industry running out ahead of itself and forgetting (maybe intentionally) to tie its shoelaces. You can bet they’re now going to put velcro on their footwear. This will all likely lead to necessary controls and third-party oversight. Most notably– who has access to player ownership data and what they do with it.


Anyway, we’ll skip the Week 5 league and do the same thing next week, Week 6– 150 spots, $5 entry, $750 in prizes, and anyone who beats me gets a $25 gift card to the store. If you win, the biggest issue you might run into is the fact that, like, 70% of my shirts are Chip Kelly-themed, and, ah, yeah he’s not moving product right now. Can I perhaps interest you in a Phire Ruben shirt? Shit.

*This is why I’ve typically promoted our smaller CB leagues or recommended head-to-head and private leagues and such. And I’m not just saying this because they pay me. This is exactly what I do every week:

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I suck. But I play.