Daily Fantasy Sports: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO)

daily fantasy sports the most addictive thing you can do on your phone other than perhaps cocaine if you own a television you cannot have missed their ads get to draftkings.com right now for one day games and let you win daily vanduul packs the thrill of a whole season into just one week for FanDuel there's no season-long commitment are your dreams big enough to cash a giant check play free with promo code drops enter promo code youtube' 60 use the promo code clean 6 enter promo code bang 9 yes daily fantasy sports combine everything dudes love sports money and a lack of commitment and I will say I was like the promo code really gives it an air of exclusivity it's like you've just joined an elite supper club whose password is bang 9 it's been impossible to avoid those ads a few months ago the two main daily fantasy sites draftkings and FanDuel were airing a national TV ad every 90 seconds you only need to remind people of something that often if your target market is sports-loving goldfish now for those who don't know let me quickly explain to you what daily fantasy is until fairly recently fantasy sports used to be a season-long game where you and your co-workers picked imaginary teams of players put $20 each in a pot and eventually lost to Janice in accounting which would have been extremely upsetting and I'll tell you why she don't give a bad sport but Denny Lee fantasy is very different with daily fantasy you can go online typically pay an entry fee of anything from 25 cents to thousands of dollars a pick a team for just a week or a day and compete against total strangers it's the same as season-long fantasy the way a nice mug of tea is the same as a nice baggie of heroin both give you a lovely warm feeling one's a little more intense and many TV networks are not just airing daily fantasy ads they're making deals with these companies we should know at NBC Sports Group and NBC's parent company Comcast are among the investors in FanDuel this is something I should disclose the 21st Century Fox owns a stake and draftkings at CNN's parent company Time Warner has made an investment in FanDuel as a matter of disclosure ESPN has an exclusive two-year marketing agreement with draftkings worth reported two hundred and fifty million dollars Wow at this point there is almost no show that is not financially compromised by a relationship with daily fantasy including yell at your daughter till she dances on lifetime in fact in fact just so you know HBO is a subsidiary of Time Warner which means that this joke about being compromised is in a sense brought to you by fandoms and I'll say thanks guys and it's not just TV networks some of the sports leagues themselves have closely partnered with these sites the NBA is an equity stake in fan d'Or MLB has won in draft kings and many NFL teams have advertising deals with the fantasy sites in fact twenty-eight of the NFL's 32 teams have sponsorship deals with either draft kings or FanDuel and the cowboys and the Patriots owners are both investors in draft kings and of course of course in a way leagues and networks like the idea of daily fantasy it's frankly the only thing that's going to make people want to watch the Bucs and the Jaguars face off on a rainy Thursday night because no one is watching just to witness the majesty of Tampa Bay kicker Connor bath unless you are Connors mom and even then she might DVR it I'm sorry Connor but it is Thursday it's scandal nights I've got Shonda Lange's right through have a good kick I hope you kick good but but it is it's a little weird to see professional sports in cahoots with these sites because most leagues have generally been opposed to gambling unlicensed gambling is illegal in most states and these sites do look a lot like gambling and don't just take that from me take it from a Hall of Fame quarterback Joe Namath do you feel like it's gambling is that what you do with it we're saying the play you have to pay and do they win something they do that's gambling okay okay okay so Joe labor a man so lacking in discernment he wore this to the Super Bowl even he can see that this is gambling and he's not alone just last month the Gaming Control Board of Nevada ruled it was gambling essentially arguing if people are going to lose all their money pressing buttons on a screen that screen better have Sex and the City characters on it and just this week there was another development big trouble for those daily fantasy sports sites FanDuel and draftkings New York's Attorney General says they amount to illegal gambling yes the New York Attorney General is attempting to shut down daily fantasy in the state and if that happens the best way to gamble here will once again be buying meat on a stick from a guy with a cart why does my chicken have whiskers do you know what I'm hungry I'm rolling the dice but both major daily fantasy sites insist that they've done nothing wrong in fact draftkings even claims on its website that it's 100% legal which is immediately suspicious if the guy at TCBY said this frozen yogurt is 100% legal you would know that somehow it was a product of the illegal sex trade and both companies bristle at the very word gambling insisting that they are something far more benign you don't view what you do here at FanDuel as gambling yeah that's a word that isn't used very much around here I take it because we are every time that you talk to our users what comes through loud and clear is the fact that we're an entertainment product okay okay sure but but you know what else is an entertainment product gambling gambling is incredibly entertaining until of course you're down 15 grand to a Russian entertainment syndicate but when draftkings in particular claims that it's not gambling it's worth noting that not only have they applied for and received a gambling license in the UK but according to the Nevada Attorney General their website once had search engine optimization phrases with multiple instances of the word betting and sites usually use alt text like that to tell search engines what they are it's why this shows website is tagged with British nerd brick dork news goof and birdie fact funny man so so here's the question how fast draftkings say they are not gambling and 100% legal well daily fantasy sites often point to one particular piece of legislation the 2006 unlawful internet gambling Enforcement Act or UI gea right now of course fantasy sports being a game of skill is carved out of UI gea and permissible and most states in the u.s. I just think under the current law right now it's very obvious that this fits within skill gaming now what he's referring to in his charismatic monotone sleep-inducing voice is that in 2006 when Congress passed a law to crack down on online gambling it exempted fantasy sports which remember back then which is those office things that you lost to Janice in accounting it was meant to be a very small exception but through that small carve out two multi-billion dollar businesses have emerged it's like those law makers built a doggie door for a beloved pooch and then daily fantasy came bursting through like a pack of wolves say we are dogs it's a doggie door right that's for us we're legally dogs woof right tell them woof step aside wool but even the guy who co-wrote that law says it wasn't meant to apply to what fantasy sports have now become the US congressman who drafted the 2006 legislation used by draftkings and FanDuel as proof of their legitimacy is upset former lawmaker Jim leach says it is quote sheer shut spa for the daily fantasy sports sites to pretend the law makes them legal okay okay okay but first of all shut spa it's actually pronounced Claude spur but but but but the idea the idea that daily fantasy sites are using this law to claim they're not gambling is not hot but it's horseshit because does that law interestingly that law never said fantasy sports were legal it just said they weren't explicitly illegal under that specific law but that each state's gambling laws would continue to apply and in general most states determine whether or not something is gambling by asking whether it's more of a game of chance or more a game of skill and if being a game of chance could make you gambling and therefore illegal it's no wonder that daily fantasy sites like to describe themselves like this they are a games of skill and we can prove that through data that we have of skills predominant factor in the game then it's a game of skill and we can show that our game like traditional fantasy sports it is skilled predominant it's it's legally critical to these companies that they be perceived as games of skill that's why every time I talk you hear the word skills more often than during an underground rap battle in fact just this Friday daily fantasy supporters actually held a protest rally outside the New York Attorney General's Office with a familiar chant hey hey hey now if you're thinking it's a little odd that ordinary fans were chanting something so legally specific there may actually be a reason for that behind me this morning they're about 250 people here they blocked the sidewalk a lot of police a lot of protesters making a lot of noise but a hundred of those 250 people who are employees of Fandral themselves because they're officers are right here in Union Square they used their own employees as protesters if you are trying to make the argument that you're not a shady gambling-related company maybe don't openly stack the deck in your favor which is not to say that daily fantasy does not involve skill it actually might involve a lot more skill than they would like you to be aware of because this summer a study revealed some shocking numbers 91% of the profits were won by just the top 1.3 percent of players during the first half of the baseball season 85 percent of players were losers eighty-five percent of fantasy players were losers which is staggering in the general population that number is 40 percent at best it essentially breaks down like this 40 percent loses 40 percent 14 percent weirdos five percent decent human beings and then of course Beyonce and if if you are wondering what it takes to be part of that big winning 1% let me show you Albertson made over $200,000 play in fantasy sports last year in drafting his fantasy teams Albertson spends hours each day studying his own homemade algorithms that track thousands of up-to-the-minute statistics and player projections projections that even factor in the hourly weather forecasts and wind conditions in each stadium this is every pitcher basically in baseball you've got dozens of rows of statistics yes fancy sports are effectively dominated by numbers nerds with sophisticated algorithms which is great news for anyone who wished Moneyball could somehow be a bit more boring but but it's not great news for a casual player and it's somewhat undercuts the key selling point in their ads anybody can win it's not just a game for professionals it's a game for everybody and fan duels made it where anybody can play anybody can succeed yeah but anybody can succeed is a bit of a stretch when only one percent of the players are winning most of the money to say anyone can succeed on daily fantasy is a bit like saying that I could be the next James Bond sure it's a mathematical possibility but it's a long shot it's a it's a different movie not better or worse just different so these daily fantasy sites may be in a bit of a quandary under our hazey gambling laws the more they're a game of skill the stronger their legal case usually is but the less appealing they become to the average player and there's actually a precedent for an online amalgam of skill and chance unfortunately for daily fantasy it's poker which which most states consider gambling and you would think if these sites were smart they would run away as fast as they could from any comparison to poker so if you go and play draftkings it actually in many ways has a similar feel to poker the games have payout structures that are similar and you know there's a lot of different variety where you can play head to head all the way up to larger tournaments the way he's describing daily fantasy in poker is so similar most people could not tell them apart they're like alligators and crocodiles or Amy Adams and Isla Fisher it are those two different people or the same person twice it's impossible to tell nobody knows and the similarities between online poker and daily fantasy don't stop there remember Cory Albertson the guy with the homemade algorithm guess where he honed those skills in a past life he was a professional poker player he's all-in and in trouble against Cory Albertson both with a pair of jacks Albertan but then he discovered daily fantasy sports and has been winning big against his online opponents ever since look if it attracts the same people and requires the same sorts of skills it's safe to say it is somewhat similar it's like finding out an Olympic gymnast has joined circus like or or an Olympic snowboarder has joined a Colorado pot dispensary there's there's connective tissue there that's all I'm saying and in case it's connection to the world of Poker was not clear enough guess who was a sponsor of the World Series of Poker this year the World Series of Poker Main Event telecast presented by draftkings they're basically saying if you love gambling you'll love draftkings for completely unrelated reasons look by any rational definition daily fantasy is gambling which which isn't necessarily a bad thing people clearly love it but if we're going to defacto legalize sports gambling across the u.s. we should at least do it on purpose and not because two companies of somehow weaseled out a way to pretend that they are not something that they clearly are because gambling enterprises wherever they are legal are regulated to protect people and that's going to need to happen here and until such time if they're going to keep bombarding us with those ads they should at least make them a little more honest daily fantasy is the hottest new way to make real money as soon as I tried drive Kings I was hooked I've been using Fandral since I saw those commercials on TV all the time I turned thirty five dollars into two million dollars into 40 dollars into zero dollars on FanDuel daily fantasy is the best I get to play every day you mean you get to gamble it's not gambling oh it's definitely gambling you have a massive gambling problem it's actually a skills-based game that is gonna make us rich one day you're an idiot with daily fantasy anyone can win I've won seven hundred and eighty four thousand dollars on FanDuel see you can compete against millions of regular sports fans just like you I have a master's degree in statistics and have designed an advanced algorithm that incorporates real-time weather condition updates and can calculate an earned run average to the 20th decimal point B just how does it feel to be a nerds daily fantasy sports is the only skills-based entertainment product where you can win big money you're where I'm a winner how are you a winner uh-huh come on winner I'll tell you how to I'm a winner I want six dollars and 18 cents playing daily fantasy that's all I'm a winner you spent $1,200 well that's what you got to do you spend money to make money I may be six dollars and 18 cents you spent $1,200 yeah that's how it works I don't understand you it cuz you don't understand sports you I understand math don't listen to the critics daily fantasy is a legitimate business daily fantasy has the support of the NFL when have they ever been associated with anything shady the best part about it is that it's currently legal so I'm excited about that look at the size this check here we go check look at this check $1,200 and you want six dollars in 18 cents you saying I'm not a big winner you spent $18 printing out this check at Kinkos well I was proud that I won and look who the chick is made up to big winner your husband oh why don't you put it where the TV used to go daily fantasy sports it's just pure fun and it's so simple I just watch football and win money I know that sounds too good to be true in fact even saying it out loud now I'm realizing that can't possibly be true you mean a minute I hate you so much daily fantasy is not just fun Who I am what'd the guy do I'm gonna turn this into a full-time career I'm pregnant and if you're concerned the daily fantasy sounds like gambling don't worry it isn't it's not gambling it's playing a game where my cash winnings depend on the performance of professional athletes wait I described gambling again didn't I with daily fantasy all you need is a love of sports I think I just realized it at this very moment I actually hate you fantastic I hate me too so that's something we agree on for the first time in a while is there something stronger than a divorce that we could get like a super divorce there was we probably couldn't afford it play daily fantasy now just use promo code gambling or promo code obviously gambling or promo code exploiting a legal loophole but by any common-sense definition this is gambling you

Channel: LastWeekTonight

Views: 11,342,625

Keywords: Fantasy Sport (Website Category), Last Week Tonight With John Oliver (TV Program), John Oliver (TV Writer), Daily Fantasy Sports

Id: Mq785nJ0FXQ

Length: 19min 2sec (1142 seconds)

Published: Sun Nov 15 2015

Reddit Comments

[u/a_esbech]

I've just checked, it's true about the show's keywords.

<meta name="keywords" content="Last Week Tonight, John Oliver, LWT, Last Week Tonight with John Oliver, british nerd, brit dork, news goof, birdy fact funny man">

[u/NordicNacho]

Hilarious. And DFS is gambling idk how you can say it isn't.

[u/PhoecesBrown]

"...because no one is watching just to witness the majesty of Tampa Bay kicker, Connor Barth.."

Speak for yourself, John.

[u/lebronianmotion]

How dare he poke fun at Barth Vader?!

Great video though.

[u/drewdle25]

Surprised he didn't mention the insider trading scandal.

[u/kkndahizo]

I can so relate to the guy who turned $35 into 2 million into $40 into $0. I think I've done it twice.

[u/frontrangefart]

Oh my god, can someone please extract that goldfish with the aaron Rodgers jersey? It's amazing.

[u/nim888]

I am still baffled by the fact that state lotteries are 100% luck based, use deceptive marketing campaigns and ruin lives, yet get no mention in this discussion.

I understand the lottery's state funding benefits, but "cease and desist" is too strong of an order for a DFS industry that can easily comply with tax code should this be a cooperative process.

[u/bil4l]

At the end of the day, the discussion shouldn't be around whether DFS is gambling or not (it is), but rather, the fact that gambling is illegal in the first place.

Like alcohol, drugs, living beyond your means and so on, compulsive habits can make just about anything bad, but gambling should be a freedom that adults should be allowed to partake in under their own free choosing.

The debate about whether it's gambling or not keeps distracting from the issue that gambling should be legal, so long as you're an adult making decisions under your own power.

I love Last Week Tonight, and JO is usually on point, but I'm going to say that he missed the mark on this one.