The Offshore Game of Online Sports Betting | Hacker News Reader

The Offshore Game of Online Sports Betting

nytimes.com

26 pointsnols21 comments

I still see no difference between Pinnacle and FanDuel, etc. It's still bookmaking in the end. It does show you that making something illegal does not make it go away, the business routes around the law. Some people apparently want to waste money on gambling just like some people want to take drugs or visit hookers. In the end is it worth making things illegal knowing it won't make any difference?

The difference is the interpretation of the law. Sports booking in the US is governed by the laws of the state so in most states it's illegal. Daily fantasy sports get around this by saying it takes "skill" and it's not pure luck.

In my opinion I don't see how the daily fantasy sports is any different then gambling on horses.

I don't think it's different and I don't know why either is illegal.

I'm not a gambler, so this doesn't really impact me, but I don't get why it's against the law.

It's more than them saying it takes "skill". The US Government blessed fantasy sports as a game of skill and specifically made it legal.

The US Government didn't feel the same way about poker and made that specifically illegal, despite it also being a game of skill. Actually, a lot of the seeds of daily fantasy sports came from poker. I'm pretty sure both FanDuel and DraftKings exec teams gave some roots in poker. The legislation that made poker illegal is what also kept fantasy sports legal, so it was near and dear to many avid poker players at the time.

You could also easily argue that normal sports betting against handicappers is a game of skill. There are experienced bettors who are long-term winners and it makes sense that if you can accurately find inaccurate lines with the right odds that you could be a long-term winner.

I personally don't find anything wrong with daily fantasy sports, but do have a problem that they were given a blessing by the government that other skills games weren't.

I can't see why skill should be any kind of justification for making stuff legal/illegal. Why should gambling on a tennis game be legal but gambling on roll of dice shouldn't? I struggle to see any kind of ethical or pragmatic justification for such policy.

To be honest if I were to go after gambling I would care about banning skill based games more as they create more delusions, professional players and mechanism to suck young people in.

It's nearly the same in Europe / Germany. However, sports betting isn't really under control here.

The reasoning is like this: Participation in the progress of playing makes a difference. In one case you are just placing money on things other people are doing. In the other case you are placing money on your own actions. For the risk of gambling addiction this is relevant. And it has a lesser (indirect) potential for fraud.

>It's nearly the same in Europe / Germany. However, sports betting isn't really under control here.

I've worked for gambling companies in the UK and we are heavily regulated, although not as much in the areas that you would want e.g. addiction.

The 'skill vs chance' test for illegality makes no sense to me. With all sports, there's luck involved as well as skill. So by betting on them, you are at the mercy of luck too. Even a game of chess might involve luck - a player might have a terrible headache, or get distracted at a key point in the game.

Surely the test, if it is to be used at all, should outlaw games where there is no skill involved at all (e.g. roulette, lotteries)

>>Surely the test, if it is to be used at all, should outlaw games where there is no skill involved at all (e.g. roulette, lotteries)

Yeah but I have issue with the criteria in the first place. What are arguments for banning purely luck based games but not skill based ones?

It does do that. Roulettes are generally banned. Of course, since the State makes the laws, the State can also decide when to make exceptions, as is the case in Nevada and Atlantic City, for example. And the State can also make exceptions to benefit itself, as is the case in state-sponsored lotteries.

This might be a semantics approach - okay, it purely is a semantics approach - but if I can use "skill" to pick a football player in the "daily fantasy sports" realm and put real money up on the selection I get the framing. However, if that player can get busted for DUI or domestic violence or assault and battery which might keep them from playing in the game, I consider that a game of luck. You know, there's a chance they don't ever take the field. And, personally, I don't have the means to bail them out. So, yeah, just my take.

William Hill runs betting shops in many towns in the UK. Sports betting is promoted on the home page: http://sports.williamhill.com/

There's an American site: http://www.williamhill.us/ though it seems they've just licensed the name.

How does the latter exist if online sports betting is illegal in the US?

I'm pretty sure William Hill operates legally in Nevada. They operate many of the sports books at smaller casinos there and I think offer betting shops outside of casinos there as well, like in sports bars. Nevada also allows online sports betting.

The US site runs under some really tight restrictions, you can only use it on a mobile phone where your network provider verifies your location is in Nevada (and Delaware maybe?), and you can only deposit cash into your account via a few physical locations.

Just legalise it already. Jeez....

And tax it. A lot. Both individual winnings and bookmakers profits.

Why should gambling be taxed more than anything else?

Because gambling becomes problem gambling for some people, and that costs society money. Higher taxes offset that cost, the same way we have higher taxes on alcohol and cigarettes.

How does it cost society money? When people waste money on gambling, it just recirculates to others.

>How does it cost society money? When people waste money on gambling, it just recirculates to others.

There is the odd case of areas where there are government-run gambling establishment (not uncommon here in Canada), or a lottery. That money doesn't necessarily get recirculated into the market, at least not before going through the distorting effect of being spent by the state.

I don't buy the argument that it offsets costs, or even that there are serious costs, where it concerns gambling. I wouldn't be surprised if the law enforcement mechanisms are more costly, by comparison. Rather, it is an attempt to engineer behaviour. In that regard, it becomes a judgment call by a government that a given behaviour is not quite bad enough to ban, but bad enough to discourage. Cigarette taxes where I live (Canada) are high enough that a black market in untaxed cigarettes (largely sold via aboriginal reserves) thrives. But others will point to decreasing rates of smoking as a victory, thus justifying the policy.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com