They say that there is no such thing as bad publicity. Just ask the folks at DraftKings and FanDuel. Only days after the New York attorney general’s office launched an investigation into potentially unfair business practices at these fantasy sports betting sites — and as questions about the behavior of employees at these companies continue to be raised — they saw more action than ever before.
A story in today’s New York Times highlights several examples of questionable behavior by employees of DraftKings and FanDuel.
There’s the DraftKings executive who tipped off a regular bettor against making a certain roster move using information he knew he shouldn’t have shared.
That same bettor later found out that someone who was regularly challenging him on FanDuel is actually a business planning manager at DraftKings, raising concerns that this person might have had access to information about the bettor’s account on that site and tried to use it against him.
Oh yeah, then there’s a DraftKings manager of analytics who won the $50,000 first prize in a FanDuel fantasy hockey contest.
Meanwhile, the guy in charge of setting the prices for players at FanDuel is apparently a world-class fantasy gambler who recently won $50,000 in DraftKings’ King of Boston contest.
If that doesn’t sound like a lot compared to the millions of dollars one could win on these sites, keep in mind that the average winnings are closer to $20.
As the Times notes, many of the employees at these companies are recruited from the ranks of top fantasy sports players. In fact, the companies have previously not only acknowledged that their employees gambled on competing sites but that this practice would have to continue in order to retain those staffers.
“We have some people who make significantly more money off of our competitors’ sites than they do working for DraftKings,” explained a DraftKings co-founder in June.
But after concerns about insider info hit the mainstream media last week, both companies put a halt to allowing their employees to gamble on fantasy sports.
Meanwhile, Bloomberg reports that this past weekend DraftKings and FanDuel combined to take in a total of nearly $44 million in “entry fees” from more than seven million entries into their big tournaments. That’s a record number, according to a UK firm that tracks this sort of thing.
by Chris Morran via Consumerist
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