Call For Regulation Of DFS (Daily Fantasy Sports) Grows Amid Shady Insider Trading Possibility At DraftKings

[HacheMan]

DraftKings, FanDuel FBI investigation could freeze daily fantasy players’ money for years

By Will HobsonOctober 20



On April 15, 2011, thousands of Americans who played online poker woke to find three popular websites shut down by the FBI and millions of dollars in players’ accounts frozen.

The online poker industry survived its “Black Friday,” as the day became known, as the Obama administration declared online gaming legal later that year in states that approved it. But the aftermath should serve as a looming worst-case scenario to the millions of Americans who play daily fantasy sports, legal experts say, as many of those players who had money saved in online poker accounts had to wait years before they got it back.

[He turned $80 into six figures playing fantasy sports. His luck may soon run out.]

There are a number of possible outcomes for the growing list of investigationsinto daily fantasy companies being mounted by federal and local law enforcement agencies across the country. These inquiries could conclude – as DraftKings and FanDuel officials adamantly maintain – that daily fantasy is legal, and that a DraftKings employee implicated in allegations of “insider trading” did nothing wrong and gained no competitive advantage.

But if a prosecutor in New York, Florida, Massachusetts, Nevada or elsewhere decides he or she has a winnable case involving daily fantasy companies, players who continue to leave large sums in online accounts risk not being able to access that cash for a while.
“It all depends on how aggressive they want to get,” said Lawrence Walters, a First Amendment and intellectual property lawyer and online gaming consultant in Florida.

Walters said a decision by federal prosecutors to pursue civil charges – which may not result in instant cash seizures – would be a more “humane” way for prosecutors to handle a potential case against a daily fantasy company. But Walter expects, if a federal agency decides to take action, it will be aggressive.

In a statement from FanDuel spokeswoman Justine Sacco, the company strongly disagreed with the idea federal law enforcement could freeze players’ accounts.

“We’ve heard nothing from anyone – anywhere – in a position to know indicating it is remotely under consideration, and there is no reason it would be. Offshore poker was a very, very different industry. Further, we segregate player funds into a dedicated master client funds account to ensure player cash is segregated and we have more than sufficient funds to meet any player’s withdrawal requests at all times,” Sacco wrote.

But Jeff Ifrah, a District of Columbia white collar criminal defense lawyer, agreed with colleagues that a financial seizure is entirely possible if federal prosecutors decide to press criminal charges.

“Most prosecutors don’t become prosecutors because they like to just slap people on the wrist,” Ifrah said.
Ifrah, who has counseled online poker companies, noted that the vast majority of poker players did get their money back, either in refunds, or through settlement agreements between the Justice Department and the companies.
But for many of those players, the waiting process took years. Last February – on a day that some poker players now call “Green Friday” – a court administrator distributed one of the last large chunks of cash held up from Black Friday, an estimated $80 million that went back to about 30,000 people.

Despite the uncertainty that surrounds daily fantasy, Ifrah maintains optimism the current controversy could ultimately strengthen the industry through the establishment of consumer protection regulations.

“Maybe this isn’t the worst thing in the world (for daily fantasy),” Ifrah said. “Consumers have a right to know that their money is safe, and that the product is fair.”

This post has been updated to include a statement from FanDuel.

 

[terps1313]

How can this be compared to poker? Poker was illegal at the time it was shut down... this isn't.

 

[doubledeuce22]

Looks like we are up to 15 lawsuits lol

Obviously I say some of this in jest, but I swear that almost all of this is a trickle down effect from the insane barrage of commercials from these (incredibly arrogant) sites. Think they are regretting their advertising blitz just a tiny bit right about now?

 

[PatsFan1283]

How can this be compared to poker? Poker was illegal at the time it was shut down... this isn't.

Irresponsible journalism. It isn't apples to apples at all.

WaPo is usually better than the other mainstream media sources but not on that 1.

 

[TheComputerGroup]

How can this be compared to poker? Poker was illegal at the time it was shut down... this isn't.

Maybe because it's not regulated? Maybe the lobbyists behind sports betting have an agenda to destroy DFS because sports vetting isn't legal in other states?

There are quite a lot of people that are against DFS.......you just don't hear about them, you're bombarded with all the stupid commercials.

 

[HacheMan]

[h=1]DFS players speak out: What is the true advantage of player ownership data?[/h]David Purdum, ESPN Staff Writer

Some serious daily fantasy players are shaking their heads in disbelief. The game they love is facing a firestorm of criticism, all started by an inadvertent leak of data that some don't believe even has much value.
This week, a law firm investigation, commissioned by DraftKings, found that its employee (Ethan Haskell) did not have access to player ownership data before entering a lineup that won him $350,000 on rival site FanDuel. On Sept. 27, Haskell inadvertently published data that revealed which players were owned on the most rosters for the weekend's NFL contests on DraftKings. He acknowledged the mistake and apologized in an online forum post.
The investigation, led by former U.S. attorney John Pappalardo of the law firm Greenberg Traurig, found no wrongdoing by Haskell. DraftKings continues to investigate all employees who have had access to internal data. When asked by ESPN if the person who supplied the data to Haskell was an active daily fantasy player, DraftKings pointed to a company statement that did not answer the question.
Nearly a month later, after allegations of insider trading went viral, the daily fantasy industry finds itself being investigated by the FBI, the Department of Justice and the New York attorney general, among others. A dozen or so class action suits have been filed, some claiming the access to internal data gave employees at daily fantasy sites an advantage when competing in contests at other sites.
So how much of an advantage does the internal player ownership data give?
Chalk asked more than a dozen daily fantasy players to characterize the edge, and the answers revealed a divide among the community.

---

[h=2]The data would give a sizable advantage[/h]DraftKings CEO Jason Robins on ESPN's "Outside the Lines"
"Of course, any information like that would give an advantage. It's not going to be enough to ensure absolute victory, but if it's information that others don't have and it pertains to the game, absolutely."

---

Brent Holloway, editor and writer for DailyFantasyTalk.com
"I think the edge would be significant. Having ownership data alone isn't enough to make an unskilled player a winner, but for sophisticated players, who can effectively incorporate that kind of data into their lineup-selection process, it would be very valuable.
"I wouldn't (be comfortable playing against someone who had live ownership data), but I typically avoid the large-scale tournaments where that kind of data would be helpful anyway, because, frankly, I'm not very good at building those kinds of lineups."

---

Daily fantasy player Brandon Adams
"If you're up against an extremely large number of competitors (say two million), then throw game theory out the window. It's all about finding the optimal lineup. We're close to that point now with big tourneys like the Millionaire Maker.
"For heads-up games, game theory is not so important; it's really about posting your best lineup.


"For small-field tourneys, game theory is crucial. If I'm playing five guys, and I have reason to suspect three or four of them are going to play Aaron Rodgers, I have to fade him, even if I think he's the best value. The prize pool is laying me a good price on him not having a good game.
"For midfield tourneys, game theory is important for reasons similar to above, but you have to anchor more strongly on the value plays.
"The way I think about it, in practice, is similar to the way a card player thinks about taking and laying odds at the table. Say there are 1,000 players in a winner-take-all tourney and four defenses to choose from in a two-game slate. Suppose, realistically, that the winner of the tourney will have to have the highest-scoring defense as part of his team.
"Suppose I think the Seahawks are very easily the best defense on the slate, and I estimate they will be 70 percent owned. When deciding whether to take them, I ballpark it like this: Am I willing to lay 7-3 odds that the Seahawks will outscore all other D's? Here I would probably decide that I'm not willing to lay that price, so I'll fade them even though they're the best value.
"To take advantage of the overly high ownership percentage of the Seahawks, I could enter lineups with the other three defenses (in proportion 1/3, 1/3, 1/3) and essentially take odds of 7-3 from the prize pool on the best that one of these three defenses will outscore Seattle."

---

Daily fantasy player Marcus Jones of DFSDoctors.com
"If you project Player A to get 20 points and 8 percent ownership and Player B to have 20 points and 17 percent ownership, Player A will win you a tournament, not Player B. It's a big advantage to take the guesswork out of it."

---

Brett Collson, editor-in-chief at FantasyWired.com and a high-volume DFS player
"In big DFS tournaments, knowing ownership percentages in advance would be far more beneficial in a sport like hockey or baseball, because the stats are far less predictive from night to night. If game results are more difficult to predict, there's added incentive in creating a unique lineup with less popular players to separate yourself from the herd. Knowing the ownership percentages ahead of time would create a huge advantage in building these contrarian lineups.
"No, I would not feel comfortable competing against someone that had ownership data given to them prior to lineup lock."

---

Brit Devine, daily fantasy player and analyst for RotoGrinders
"As full-time players, many of the decisions we make in large, million-dollar-plus prize pool tournaments are determined by what we perceive to be expected ownership rates of player. If we think a player is going to be highly owned, perhaps we completely disregard that player in lineup construction in hopes that player has a bad game, and we gain a large advantage over the rest of the field that used him. Many of the full-time players, including myself, have become very good at projecting the ownership rates ourselves and even typically discuss it live on the shows we do with each other on Rotogrinders. It's not that difficult to predict within 5 percent of a player's ownership when you have been doing this for a while.
"That said, assuming one did have full access to ownership percentage data before rosters have locked, there is no doubt an edge to be gained by an elite player if they had this. I wouldn't classify this as a large edge, as most of us already have a decent idea what is going on to begin with."

---

Al Zeidenfeld, daily fantasy analyst for ESPN and DraftKings
"The [ownership] data is already out there and publicly, easy to consume in front of paywalls on multiple different sites. Now, [in] baseball that information is not out there. However, you can get that information if there's an early and a late slate by playing the early slate and charting down the numbers of the late-slate guys. You could have an idea or a snapshot of what those numbers are going to be.
"Baseball's way more variant; yes, you would have an advantage. This is a sport where there's going to be variance. Sometimes you're going to be on the right side of it, sometimes you're going to be on the wrong side of it.
"The percentage-owned numbers mean a lot more in baseball, because they're not as readily accessible, but they're still not predictive.
"Yes, you would have an edge in tournaments, possibly in the fact that you would know who the lower-earned players were. But those players would still have to come through for you."


Ben Brown, co-founder and chief editor at industry site DFSReport.com
"For all DFS sports, I think ownership percentages are extremely valuable. So if a player was able to look at these in advance and no one else [could], they would have a distinct advantage. For specific sports like MLB and NHL, it would essentially turn DFS into a math problem where allocating your bankroll to the right percentages would give you a good chance at profiting most nights. When most are right and the chalk comes through you would take a loss, but on the nights where most are wrong and the chalk doesn't pay off, you would be in position to profit big and a lot of times be in position to finish highly in a GPP (guaranteed prize pool) contest.
"For the NFL where we do have FanDuel Thursday ownership percentages available to the public, being able to see Sunday percentages even at a different site would be valuable to me. People making the argument that they are not valuable forget there is a significant time lag of information between Thursday contests and Sunday contests. Things like injury concerns (actives/inactives), weather and even general public sentiment can have a drastic impact on ownership levels from Thursday to Sunday. This only becomes more prevalent as the season carries on.
"One extreme example of that is Devonta Freeman in Week 5, 2015. My site (DFSReport) had his ownership tracked at 40.9 percent and Rotogrinders at 40.7 percent in Thursday-roster-locked contests but by Sunday he had moved down to 26.9 percent in the FanDuel Millions contest and only 21.7 percent in the DraftKings Millionaire Maker contest. That shows that people are adjusting their strategy from Thursday to Sunday based on these ownership percentages and other public sentiment measures. At 40 percent owned, Freeman was an easy fade for a lot of people, but when he drops down into the 20-28 percent range, some more people would have most likely been on him if they would have known his ownership dropped.
"NBA is somewhat of a different monster. Late-breaking injury news and scratches are king. Being able to adjust to that information is really what distinguishes the best DFS NBA players. Having said that, I do think ownership percentages would be beneficial and allow you to see the best percentages to make a unique lineup.
"Especially in a GPP contest, I would not participate if I knew that others had access to ownership data that I had not seen. It would definitely cause me to be too uncomfortable to play as I think others with this data would have a significant edge over me."

---

DFS player Ed Miller, a noted author on game strategy
"Bottom line: I think the information, real-time inside information, would be potentially highly useful on high-stakes GPPs, particularly baseball, and also a high-stakes NFL GPP and less useful in the Millionaire Maker-type contests. I think the real, live up-to-the-minute usage information is not very useful in a Millionaire Maker.
"If you told me, 'Ed, I'm the money fairy, and I'm going to give you some inside information. You pick the way that it's going to make you the most money.' I think the way that would make the most money is if you had that information in a high-stakes MLB GPP contest from the site you were entering on. In that case, that information would mean a ton. I don't know how to quantify it, but if someone told me that it would increase the value of your entry from $1,200 without that information to $2,000 with it, I wouldn't call them crazy."

---

[h=2]Not a significant edge[/h]Daily fantasy player John Lee (tipandpick) of Footballguys.com and RotoGrinders.com
"Projecting ownership data, while an integral part of a DFS player's research process, is only one piece of a much larger puzzle. A successful player also needs to understand key metrics, matchup data, injury implications, game strategy, player projections and ultimately how each of those variables relates to the individual salaries of the players on that game slate. Those factors, including projected ownership percentages, are used to generate lineups that have a better-than-average chance of winning a larger tournament; no individual component is more or less important than the aggregated sum of those parts.
"For example, if a person were to have sole possession of updated, accurate ownership information, that person would still have to run the aforementioned analyses and then hope those predictive analytics were accurate on game day. The mainstream media comparisons to 'insider trading' are farcical because possessing insider information on a company is a no-lose situation -- one either buys or sells short the stock in question based on the non-public information to create profit. With DFS, one still has to create a perfect roster based on a matrix of analytics that leads to thousands of potential lineup combinations, none of which are guaranteed to generate profit."

---

Daily fantasy player Jeff Collins (JeffElJefe), a content provider for RotoGrinders.com
"Knowing athlete ownership data would be useless for at least 95 percent of people that play DFS and would probably even negatively impact how the majority construct their lineups. There are very few people (certainly less than 5 percent) that understand game theory correctly and how to apply that data to their advantage. And in reality, that small percentage of people are already able to estimate the percentages very accurately on their own. So the edge would be very small, though hard to quantify in percentages.
"If someone has DraftKings [ownership] data and they are using it to play on FanDuel, I wouldn't care, but nobody playing on DraftKings should have access to any DraftKings game data that the public doesn't have access to."

---

Daily fantasy player Peter Jennings, a DraftKings analyst and ESPN contributor
"There would be no edge at all in cash games and/or head-to-heads and 50/50's. However, there would be an advantage in the tournaments. Quantifying the edge is challenging. Obviously, you still need to pick the best players. There's clearly an advantage in knowing who all the low-owned guys are, and if you have one of those players projected really low, it's a big advantage to kind of pile on that guy. Because of that, you'd certainly have a higher ROI (return on investment) in large-field tournaments.
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</article>"The interesting thing is there is so much public data about this stuff. If you play on FanDuel, on Thursday, you get all that data. You also can just kind of tell, someone that is going to be able to use this as an advantage is already going to have a good gauge of what ownership is going to be. So someone who is sharp enough to be a winner is going to be really good at projecting ownership percentages as is. Now, there's going to be some outliers, some guys you might think are going to be heavily owned that aren't or vice versa, and that certainly would be an advantage.
"To sum it up, I think the overall edge of having that information, before a Sunday contest or something like that, is relatively minimal. Because you have that information because of the Thursday contest on FanDuel, you should be relatively good at projecting ownership as a sharp going into the tournaments, and in addition to that, I think the bigger thing is that you still have to nail the bigger players."

 

[cutacrossshorty]

Worth noting, Ethan Haskell's winning FanDuel lineup had 5 players with low or relatively low ownership percentages that week:

Andy Dalton
Davonte Freeman
AJ Green
Randall Cobb
Allen Hurns

I think it naive to think Haskell wasn't a savvy player who didn't know the advantages of ownership percentages. However, I believe any savvy player would've used Freeman because that week he was priced like a backup, but was going to get almost all the snaps due to an injury to the starter (Coleman). The unknown was how well he would perform.

 

[HacheMan]

Worth noting, Ethan Haskell's winning FanDuel lineup had 5 players with low or relatively low ownership percentages that week:

Andy Dalton
Davonte Freeman
AJ Green
Randall Cobb
Allen Hurns

I think it naive to think Haskell wasn't a savvy player who didn't know the advantages of ownership percentages.

No question about it, and this guy below makes it very simple to understand for those still confused about the advantage of having info that should be available to EVERYONE....



Daily fantasy player Marcus Jones of DFSDoctors.com
"If you project Player A to get 20 points and 8 percent ownership and Player B to have 20 points and 17 percent ownership, Player A will win you a tournament, not Player B. It's a big advantage to take the guesswork out of it."

 

[Willie99]

this is the second time this week I posted something in the wrong thread

is it me?

WTF?

 

[CHOPTALK]

But the people who can take advantage the most from this "inside" info are the people who are already really really good at figuring out the ownership percentages within 4 to 5% anyway.'

Not saying he should have had this info and nobody else but he still had to construct a good lineup.

 

[CHOPTALK]

And I read somewhere that after the lineups got unlocked at the other place some of the ownership percentages were off as much as 20% from one site to the other so this so called info was not exactly as precise as people made it out to be.

Both places have different scoring systems so just because one place has a certain ownership percentage does not mean the other place is going to be the same.

Not saying this is not good info to have.

It certainly is something I would like to use if I had access to it but its not as big of a deal as some people think.

 

[HacheMan]

Chop why are they withholding the percentages to begin with??
Absolutely no reason to unless there's a motive.

Sports books release & update the % of sides & totals taken so players can use it for their own judgement.

There is no doubt in most ppl's minds that employees from FanDuel & DraftKings have all along been taking advantage of this.

If not they would not be so offended by the idea of regulation & DraftKings would not have such a sarcastic attitude about it all...

 

[CHOPTALK]

Chop why are they withholding the percentages to begin with??
Absolutely no reason to unless there's a motive.

Sports books release & update the % of sides & totals taken so players can use it for their own judgement.

There is no doubt in most ppl's minds that employees from FanDuel & DraftKings have all along been taking advantage of this.

If not they would not be so offended by the idea of regulation & DraftKings would not have such a sarcastic attitude about it all...

They dont withhold the percentages after the games kickoff.

But as a player I would never want the % to be known before the games start unless I was the only one who had that info. lol.
After they start yes. Which they do release.
Before the games start absolutely not. I would not want that to be known before.

 

[PatsFan1283]

They dont withhold the percentages after the games kickoff.

But as a player I would never want the % to be known before the games start unless I was the only one who had that info. lol.
After they start yes. Which they do release.
Before the games start absolutely not. I would not want that to be known before.

Release the info before the games start and the industry is probably dead. Atleast cash games are. Pretty terrible idea.

You can easily make it so that very few people have the info and that queries are all logged.

That controversy is so last month. I can't believe people are still talking about. DK and FD have way bigger problems than an employee winning 350k.

 

[CHOPTALK]

Release the info before the games start and the industry is probably dead. Atleast cash games are. Pretty terrible idea.

You can easily make it so that very few people have the info and that queries are all logged.

That controversy is so last month. I can't believe people are still talking about. DK and FD have way bigger problems than an employee winning 350k.

I agree. Thats what I was saying.

Hache comparing that to sportsbooks releasing wagering percentages is about as apples and oranges as you can get.

 

[PatsFan1283]

It seems like a lot of states are taking a "legalize and regulate" tone from a lot of what I've read in recent days. I still think a lot of the states won't be thrilled with how little $ DFS can bring them but we'll see.

Who knows if the feds see it the same way too. Congressional hearing next month.

 

[CHOPTALK]

They have a really great thread at 2+2 on this subject

 

[LoCalDallasGuy]

dfs will take a huge hit if they legalize sports betting.

 

[HacheMan]

They dont withhold the percentages after the games kickoff.

AFTER kickoff is meaningless & gives those who see it ahead of time clear advantage.





But as a player I would never want the % to be known before the games start unless I was the only one who had that info. lol.



Well that's exactly the point!
You just solidified the argument that THEY are the only ones who see it before kickoff & hold an edge




After they start yes. Which they do release.



Again, meaningless to the public releasing it afterwards when a few have the advantage of it beforehand right up until kickoff.

.

 

[HacheMan]

dfs will take a huge hit if they legalize sports betting.

Yep...Huge hit is HUGE understatement