Daily Fantasy Sports in Florida: Legal Betting's Impact

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00:00 [MUSIC]

00:03 Sports betting now legal in the state of Florida only via the Seminole Tribe of Florida and their

00:08 gaming program. But what does that mean for the future of daily fantasy sports? Well, Sam is with

00:14 us to talk about that. And certainly, Sam, I knew that this was coming down. I kind of had a feeling

00:20 that once Florida got sports betting, that everything else would be scrutinized.

00:25 And indeed, not just scrutinized, but boy, it does feel like there are some folks who would like to

00:31 eliminate DFS unless they want to pay the tax. And I don't know that that's going to happen. But

00:37 anyway, thanks for joining us here on the show. I'm following, of course, very closely because

00:41 I live in Florida. Yeah, absolutely, Craig. Yeah, to your point, pretty much when any state legalizes

00:48 sports betting, they then kind of take a look back at what are our fantasy rules? What are our

00:53 regulations around daily fantasy sports? Maybe some of these apps which can look pretty similar

00:58 to sports betting. And in a lot of cases, in these states like Florida, like California,

01:04 big states where you really had no legal sports betting option, people really turned to fantasy

01:09 sports kind of in lieu of that. And it kind of filled that void for a while. And now that you

01:14 have the Hard Rock bet app back online in Florida, people are betting a lot on it, obviously. But

01:19 to your point, the people who control that are kind of looking at what they view as maybe the

01:24 competitors who have been operating in Florida for a while. So there's been a few bills introduced

01:29 already this session in Florida, which just started a few days ago, that would propose kind

01:34 of regulating the daily fantasy sports industry. Now, Florida is one of those states where

01:39 essentially, it's the Wild West for these fantasy sports companies. They've been operating

01:45 despite no real rules or regulations saying they can or can't and according to who you talk to,

01:50 it could be very different kind of the view on whether or not they're legal. But you have Draft

01:55 Kings, FanDuel, Better, PrizePix, Underdog Fantasy, all among the apps that have operated

02:00 there for years without any real, you know, pushback from the state. But that's all starting

02:05 to change now that you have sports betting back online. This new bill from a Florida senator would

02:10 essentially create the framework to regulate the industry, putting in place different rules and

02:15 regulations, including a minimum 21 years old age to play. And another provision, which is probably

02:23 the most important thing here, is that operators could not be contestants in the contests that they

02:28 offer. This takes aim at the player versus house model, which has been really successful for

02:33 companies like PrizePix and Underdog, which offer these pick 'em games that essentially allow you

02:38 to parlay together different player props over unders in return for a prize. So a number of

02:45 states have kind of identified this as sports betting. Florida is one of those. Their commission

02:50 came out recently and sent cease and desist letters to these companies and broke decades of silence

02:55 on what they believe to actually be sports betting. Now, they don't really have the,

03:00 you know, wherewithal or the tools to enforce these regulations. And that's what the bill would

03:05 create and allow them to do. It's unlike another bill in the House, which would essentially create

03:11 the framework for these games, but allow the pick 'em games to be included. So, so far, we've got

03:16 two kind of competing pieces of legislation in Florida, and obviously a ton of groups involved

03:21 with, you know, the Seminoles being behind Hard Rock Bet. So it's going to be an interesting

03:26 session in Florida when you have all these kind of competing, you know, operators and competing

03:32 interests here and different lawmakers already taking different stances. So it's going to be

03:36 pretty interesting to see what happens going forward. Could it lead to these operators

03:41 pivoting to peer-to-peer games more as they've done in a few other states? Certainly. But, you

03:46 know, whether or not they do that depends on how far Florida goes with enforcing this fantasy

03:52 regulation and only things can be done through the Seminole Trial.

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