I say this as the guy who consistently makes fun of the lottery while also buying video game 'this is totally not gambling either' loot chests.
About 8 years ago where I live they wanted to built a horse racing track and we regularly got flyers from the anti-horse-racing group(local giant church) that claimed gambling brings crime, alcoholism, and prostitution to any community that allows it.
(It is not unique in that respect.)
Second, that was a time where households relied on a single male breadwinner. If that man became a gambling addict, it destroyed not only his future, but the future of his wife and children as well. So much the same as the Temperance movement, anti-gambling laws were aimed at protecting the entire family.
"Hey boss, Guido picked up the unsupervised merchandise off the back of our truck, but don't worry he just lost a $10000 bet on our blackjack table." (wink, wink)
Because the State can't stand the competition. Note that most numbers games (i.e., private lotteries) have better payout odds than the State lottery.
Then followed up: "ESPN and @DVNJr write that daily fantasy has 'imploded.' Really? Both leading players are still operating. [...] True neither FD nor DK are profitable. But they are young tech startups. Lack of profitability doesn't mean disaster at this stage" https://twitter.com/danprimack/status/768464361258098688
From the POV of investors, I'd say that the former is the critical problem, the latter is merely the cause of the problem.
From other POVs, that might be different.
That's pretty much the key to winning on these. Whenever they interview a 'big winner' they all seem to do the same thing - play a bunch of picks for each bet to spread out their chances. This of course is not what the little guy does or can do. There's so much 'luck' involved that you have to spread it out to have any hope of any sort of consistent winning.
That's also why there are more multi picks vs single-only picks available. The big guys can then buy bunches of entries in multi-pick contests.
[0] http://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2015/10/30/draftkings-fa...
I was surprised that they didn't monetize some of the analytics (or whatever utility player scripts were providing) that the big winners were using after banning them from using their own scripts.
But then again, a lot of the decisions described in the article were surprising.
I don't believe the issue around small numbers of players making all of the money is important. As someone who uses both platforms for fun, I find I'm willing and many of my friends are willing to lose a bit of money each week as it makes the games far more entertaining to watch when you have a rooting interest. Many of the sports leagues and ESPN realize this which is why you saw them invest in these companies. Fantasy leads to more engagement with the sports and daily fantasy leads to even more engagement.
Daily fantasy is not for everyone, but it'll likely maintain a core number of users, many of whom use both FanDuel and DraftKings. Acquisition costs will be less important in the future and provided that fixed costs such as legal fees decrease in the coming years, these companies will become stable and profitable.
According to the article we're discussing, NY passed a bill, the Governor signed it into law, and both DraftKings and FanDuel started accepting NY customers again the following Monday.
the biggest long term problem i see (and the article partially addresses) is all these pros bumhunting the low-stakes games because there's no reason not to. it doesn't take any additional time nor mental focus to join some microstakes games like it would if you were playing online poker.
anyone who play dfs, how are money withdrawals from the site? is it relatively quick/easy to get money out of your accounts? otherwise i definitely see that as a huge risk just like it was towards the end of the online poker boom.
In the dark days of online poker after they shut down a lot of the payment vendors, I'd get shady looking checks from some middle man that I had to wait weeks for at times(never played/won enough to need wire transfers or fancier methods). That was horrible.
I've had withdrawals from DraftKings that take a day or two and go straight to my credit card or PayPal account. FWIW I play in California.
Edit: To be fair, paper check withdrawals did get faster as time wore on. Not sure how it is now. I live in SoCal and always preferred the card rooms than online poker anyway, so it's not worth the trouble for me.
I eventually stopped doing that after seeing weekly posts on that subreddit about how people were losing too much money and had to stop playing for a while. Didn't want to keep messing around helping people lose money. Always that side to an industry based on gambling.
I borrowed a lot from Adam Krejcik's tweets, who is quoted in this article. See slide 21 for notes about player attrition
[1] http://www.slideshare.net/robinhowlett/daily-fantasy-sports-...
