Winning money at daily fantasy sports is a long shot

Anyone who watches professional football on TV has likely seen the commercials for DraftKings or FanDuel, the two biggest companies in the growing industry of one-day fantasy sports. The ads make fantasy games sound easy. Select a sport, pay an entry fee (typically $1 to $20) and choose a lineup of players based on who you think will perform well in that day’s real-life games. Assemble a better team than your competitors, and you stand to win a jackpot of hundreds of thousands of dollars or more.

But with beginners facing off against elite players, chances are you won’t be the next “regular guy” holding a giant check on TV between quarters. About 70 percent of daily fantasy players broke even or lost money over the past year, according to Eilers Research, a gaming research firm.

Daily fantasy is considered a game of skill, which currently exempts it from a federal law prohibiting sports gambling. That may change. The FBI and the Justice Department are investigating, and class-action suits have cried “foul.” Six states already label daily fantasy as gambling — including Nevada, whose gaming commission sets the tone for regulators nationwide.