A reasonable measure to regulate fantasy sports

Our attitude toward fantasy sports betting isn’t far from that expressed by former presidential candidate Chris Christie in a debate last fall, after Jeb Bush called for the industry’s regulation.

“Are we really talking about getting government involved in fantasy football?” Christie declared. The New Jersey governor proceeded to recite a list of genuine problems facing the country, and then concluded, “Enough on fantasy football. Let people play. Who cares?”

But apparently many lawmakers care, since in state after state they’ve proposed legislation to regulate daily fantasy sports in the wake of an incident last year in which an employee of DraftKings won $350,000 at rival fantasy sports website FanDuel.

Although initial reports raised the specter of inside information being used in that successful bet, later investigation indicated otherwise. The bet looked suspicious, of course, and The New York Times revealed that it was quite common for employees of the big fantasy sports companies to play the games — a practice that was later barred to ensure customer confidence and prevent potential abuses. Still, it’s hard to see who was actually harmed in the highly publicized incident.

But the reports did alert politicians to the fact that the fantasy sports business was largely unregulated — and they’ve been moving quickly to plug the gap.

In Colorado, a bipartisan bill introduced last week would create a Colorado Office of Fantasy Sports that would license operators, check their backgrounds and impose a list of regulations on them. The bill’s requirements appear modest, which is no doubt why the Fantasy Trade Sports Association is on board. It knows that regulation is probably inevitable and that it might as well embrace proposals that will allow it to survive and even thrive.

However, the legislation as introduced left blank two fairly critical details: the initial license application fee and the annual license renewal fee, which if high enough could become barriers for new companies to enter the market.

But for the most part the bill’s requirements appear defensible.

And say this much for the bill’s sponsors: Their professed goal is to protect consumers who place bets with the companies rather than prevent consumers from betting at all.

By contrast, officials in a number of states — including New York, Illinois, Washington and Iowa — have declared that playing daily fantasy sports online for money is illegal, and in some cases have sought to suppress the activity. Thankfully, Colorado officials have resisted the temptation to tell people they can’t continue to participate in a popular activity because it looks a lot like gambling. Sure it does, but so what?

For the vast majority of players, the betting also appears to be harmless.