Daily Fantasy Sports fiends are yelling Yahoo! as the state crackdown on fantasy games continued on some sites this week, but not all of them.
On the same afternoon state Attorney General Eric Schneiderman was touting a settlement with DraftKings and FanDuel in which they agreed to immediately stop taking bets in New York, bettors were still able to play DFS on Yahoo’s site.
DraftKings and FanDuel are the only two DFS operators named in Schneiderman’s initial cease-and-desist letters aimed at cracking down on the billion-dollar industry. Yahoo is operating in a loophole and was still free to peddle daily fantasy games to a thirsty marketplace while its competitors agreed to shut down.
FANDUEL, DRAFTKINGS ON HOLD IN NY PENDING NEW REGULATIONS
The highest entry fee on Yahoo yesterday was $1,050 for a chance at $3,000 in a three-team NBA group. The largest purse on Yahoo was a piece of $10,000 in a massive contest that was trying to fill more than 2,000 players. “Yahoo was not the subject of the original cease-and-desist letters,” Justin Fielkow, an attorney at the Franklin Law Group and co-founder of The Sports Esquires website, told the Daily News.
While we could not access DraftKings, FanDuel and StarsDraft.com from the newsroom at the Daily News in lower Manhattan, we were able to still make bets on Yahoo’s site.
Yahoo accepted a $10 minimum deposit Monday at 4:30 p.m. We played in one $1.3K NHL Tournament with a first prize of $125. While players have to disclose if they live in Hawaii, Louisiana, Florida, Missouri, Montana, Iowa, Nevada, Arizona and Washington, where DFS is banned, there was no such disclosure for players in New York.
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So why is Yahoo permitted to continue to do business while DraftKings and FanDuel cannot?
Yahoo did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
In December, a lower court judge granted a preliminary injunction against DraftKings and FanDuel in New York. The same day, the two companies sought an emergency stay from the appellate court, which was granted and had the effect of delaying the enforcement of the lower court’s temporary injunction, pending a full appeal, Fielkow said.
