With millions of participants and millions of dollars on the online (both legitimate and illegitimate), fantasy sports has become big business. But as the hobby, or sport, matures, the games players can participate in is evolving at a rapid pace.
This rapid evolution and expansion, with the stakes getting higher to boot, now has regulators taking a peak at the business. Most recently, lawmakers in Kansas have started making some threats.
Paul Charchian, president of the Fantasy Sports Trade Association, has been around the industry for many years and he believe's what's happening in Kansas shouldn’t be ignored. While states like Maryland have actively made fantasy sports legal, Kansas has gone the other way.
“The Kansas Racing Commission has decided that fantasy sports with an entry fee, even among friends where there’s no ‘rake’ and all the money’s coming in and going back out is in their mind a game of chance.” With Kansas now seeing it as a form of gambling, Charchian says “they’ve effectively criminalized fantasy play for hundreds of thousands of Kansas residents.”
Charchian and other folks in the industry obviously object to the characterization, claiming it takes much skill and experience to be effective in fantasy year over year, thus meaning it’s not a game a chance. Forty-seven other states agree with them.
Legal issues aside, the fantasy industry is booming with all kinds of new games and services. The rise of daily games has become a huge boon to the industry and fantasy players, with shorter-term games more accessible and payoff more immediate for competitors.
Related: 5 surprising stats about fantasy sports
On the flipside, current leagues are now calculating all kinds of new categories (Charchian notes old fantasy football leagues just counted touchdowns), like receptions, bonuses for longer touchdown plays, and ratios like WHIP and OPP for baseball. With added complications come more sophisticated, long-term setups like “empire” leagues.
According to Charchian, empire leagues “roll over half of the year’s funds from year to year, waiting for someone to win two years in a row and then that person gets the rolling pot in an empire league,” he says. “So these leagues are for people thinking four, five, six years down the road as they are playing long term because they know they’re going to keep playing fantasy for that long.”
On the services side, new offerings giving fantasy players starting line-up advice, to league management, and even escrow services (with Charchian himself operating one called LeagueSafe.com), are appearing almost every day now.
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