New York Mafia to Take out FanDuel and DraftKings
First it was online poker. Now it’s daily fantasy sports that’s caught in the crosshairs of the New York Mafia. The Attorney General of New York State Eric Schneiderman has ordered FanDuel and DraftKings to stop taking bets from New Yorkers.
Schneiderman has determined daily fantasy sports to be illegal gambling and he intends to save you poor peasants from the pitfalls of illegal activities like betting a dollar that your fantasy football lineup is better than mine.
There are smaller DFS websites that the attorney general could have included in his investigation, but I assume he wanted to get to the two heads of the DFS families that would make the biggest splash possible.
This Vito Corleone is setting up DraftKings and FanDuel to meet the same fate as Moe Greene and Virgil Sollozzo at the end of The Godfather.
Who did these two upstart fantasy sports businesses thinks they were, horning in on the government’s gambling action. Didn’t they know how a Vito Corleone type would react to them blatantly making money hand over fist and not offering a chance for he and his cronies to wet their beak?
They know now. Mr. Schneiderman is starting the ball rolling that will give fellow Dons in other states the confidence to start outlawing DFS in their territories. The attorney general has been helped by Preet Bharara, a lawyer who was instrumental in whacking online poker back in 2011.
Politicians are very good at protecting their interests and don’t even have to use the weapons that a Corleone might employ, like a .38 duct taped behind a toilet or a car bomb for one of the DFS CEO’s new bride. No, these attorneys use what they call LAWS, which are simply words written on paper by those who believe they are superior to the underlings for which the LAWS are written.
They will also use propaganda to make daily fantasy sports look like baby killers and home wreckers. These politicians have the “protect young people” card locked and loaded. They will have the rare story about a 16-year-old kid racking up $50,000 on his step dad’s credit card on DraftKings or a bankruptcy caused by a poor sanitation worker who thought he could flip his weekly paycheck into one of those giant cardboard checks he saw on a FanDuel ad.
Make no mistake this New York Mafia does not play around. They will not be stopped by silly petitions or even a million tweets to the attorney general’s twitter account. They intend to stop daily fantasy sports by any means necessary and ultimately that means they are willing to use violence just like Michael Corleone was forced to use eventually.
Don’t believe it? Just let either CEO of DraftKings or FanDuel disobey the commands of the AG in New York. Schneiderman will send men with guns to have them arrested eventually. Fines and penalties will come first, but make no mistake; violence is how laws are enforced.
So what should the good DFS playing citizens of America, once land of the free, do in response to the New York attorney general’s orders?
First we should get good and pissed off.
Then we should disobey any law that prohibits us from playing daily fantasy sports for money. That’s what a good American would do in response to bad laws. Bad Americans would just go along like docile little peasants so as not to anger the heads of the most successful gang in history….government.
As for DFS players in New York, they should protest by not buying another state lottery ticket ever. The hypocrisy of the lotto games not being the same as gambling is sickening at best.
New Yorkers should also employ any way possible to keep playing on the DFS site of their choice. If that means changing an IP address or getting a Paypal account set up in another state that has more freedom than New York, then why not? Breaking bad laws isn’t immoral. Breaking bad laws may be one of the most moral acts possible and one of the best expressions of freedom that a supposedly free populace can make.
I sure hope DraftKings and FanDuel survive the hit put out on them by New York’s Attorney General. I feel like daily fantasy sports will survive, unlike online poker for a couple of reasons.
For one, fantasy football which drives DFS is immensely more popular than online poker ever could have been. Surely players like me won’t just stand aside while “our” government just crushes this innovative new hobby.
Next and more importantly, DFS companies have major investors including Jerry Jones of the Cowboys, the NBA, Â Google Capital, Fox Sports, Major League Baseball, The Madison Square Garden Company and Legends, The Kraft Group (owners of the New England Patriots) and more.
Obviously all these investors aren’t going to let their big stacks of cash infusions just get flushed down the toilet. That will mean a lot of campaign contributions and lobbyist flying to Washington DC and New York right now to protect DraftKings and FanDuel from the Mafia that just can’t stand the thought of their power being threatened.
I don’t know the best way for DK and FD to defend their territory. I do know they can’t keep saying that their games are skill based and therefore not really gambling. Fantasy sports already had a loophole that made it legal, but now that politicians see that they have something to gain by closing that loophole, DFS companies need to use a different tactic.
Some politicians are arguing that the loophole is out dated and wasn’t intended for DFS style of play that has erupted over the past couple years. That’s code for “DraftKings and FanDuel are now making too much money for us to ignore.”
I would argue that most the gambling laws on the books that keep intelligent people from wagering their own money are outdated. This isn’t 1965 where information isn’t easily available. It is very easy to find out online if wagering at a casino, state lottery hub, or on DraftKings is a good idea. The house always wins if you play long enough.
We get it and don’t need the protection of any Mafia to keep us from blowing through own hard earned money. It’s 2015 and Americans should be able to play DFS online for any amount they can afford.
If Eric Schneiderman’ move against DraftKings and FanDuel results in the momentum that eventually results in this new industry being shut down completely, it will be another dark day for America. Old school fantasy sports opened up an entirely new industry that actually creates jobs. Daily fantasy sports has increased those jobs exponentially. There is also extra tax money going to governments as these fantasy reporters, writers, and software creators make more income.
Taxes and jobs are a big topic in the political debates we see on TV and here the government is trying to slow down an exploding industry that will help with both those issues.
If the DFS industry is crushed then investors and bright entrepreneurs should look to other countries for future business startups. They should seek out a nation that truly believes in freedom. Clearly the United States Mafia isn’t interested in any freedoms that threaten their authority.