{"id":76753,"date":"2018-05-01T15:00:10","date_gmt":"2018-05-01T22:00:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.casino.org\/news\/?p=76753"},"modified":"2018-05-02T01:13:50","modified_gmt":"2018-05-02T08:13:50","slug":"academic-study-says-daily-fantasy-sports-is-skill-not-gambling","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.casino.org\/news\/academic-study-says-daily-fantasy-sports-is-skill-not-gambling\/","title":{"rendered":"Academic Study Rates Daily Fantasy Sports as Skill, Not Gambling"},"content":{"rendered":"

Daily fantasy sports are not games of chance, says a new study by a Kansas State University professor, soon to be published in full in the Journal of Sports Science. <\/em>The report advises that state legislators should not class the contests as gambling.<\/a><\/p>\n

\"Daily
New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman prosecuted DraftKings and FanDuel in 2016 for illegal gambling. The authors of a new study hope their research will help to inform lawmakers about the difficult question of skill vs luck in DFS. (Image: Politico)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cWhether or not individuals in a state can participate in daily fantasy sports has a massive economic and societal impact,\u201d states the study. \u201cThis paper determines that daily fantasy sports are not games of chance.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe key argument probabilistically shows that \u201cUnskilled participants never win at DFS,\u201d it continues. \u201cThe contrapositive of this statement, which is logically equivalent, states \u201cWith extremely high probability, all DFS winners have skill.\u201d\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

Losing Streak <\/strong><\/h2>\n

Professor Todd Easton\u00a0and co-author\u00a0Sarah Newell\u00a0arrived at their conclusions through good-old-fashioned trial and error, with the emphasis squarely on error. The researchers used a simulation to generate random teams \u201cto model a completely \u2018unskilled\u2019 DFS participant\u201d and lost every single one of the 35 contests they played across the course of the 2016 NFL season.<\/p>\n

The most astonishing result is that not a single team won a payout,\u201d the paper states. \u201cIt is difficult to truly comprehend the extreme rarity of losing all 35 contests. This is less likely than a single ticket winning the Powerball. It is less likely than flipping a coin and getting heads 28 times in a row. It is 300 times less likely than being struck by lightning this year.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

They then compared these results with those of picks created by an\u00a0integer programming model, which creates a skilled strategy to select a team. Needless to say, the programming model outperformed the unskilled simulation each time.<\/p>\n

The authors note that in a game of chance every strategy should perform equally well and, in particular, \u201ca random team should perform as well as a team selected by any other strategy.\u201d<\/p>\n

Authors Hope Research Will Inform Lawmakers<\/strong><\/h2>\n

The authors hope their work might help diffuse the \u201ctense political climate\u201d surrounding DFS contests, which reached its height in 2016 when the New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman sued DraftKings and FanDuel<\/a> for illegal gambling, ordering them to cease operations in the state. DFS contests were subsequently legalized by the legislature in Albany.<\/p>\n

\u201cElected leaders and the judges of the country or state determine what constitutes gambling. This paper has shown that DFS contests do not meet one the necessary requirements of gambling: chance,\u201d concluded the study.<\/p>\n

\u201cThus, the authors recommend that states should no longer legally consider DFS salary cap contests as gambling and encourage the use of this research to inform the public and lawmakers of these new developments in this controversial topic.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Daily fantasy sports are not games of chance, says a new study by a Kansas State University professor, soon to be published in full in the Journal of Sports Science. The report advises that state legislators should not class the contests as gambling. \u201cWhether or not individuals in a state can participate in daily fantasy […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":36,"featured_media":76762,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[14007],"tags":[],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nAcademic Study Says Daily Fantasy Sports is Skill Not Gambling<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Kansas State University professor concludes daily fantasy sports are games of skill after losing 35 contests in a row using a random model designed to simulate a completely unskilled player.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"noindex, follow\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Academic Study Says Daily Fantasy Sports is Skill Not Gambling\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Kansas State University professor concludes daily fantasy sports are games of skill after losing 35 contests in a row using a random model designed to simulate a completely unskilled player.\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.casino.org\/news\/academic-study-says-daily-fantasy-sports-is-skill-not-gambling\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Casino.org\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:publisher\" content=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/Casino.OrgNews\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2018-05-01T22:00:10+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2018-05-02T08:13:50+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/www.casino.org\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/05\/schneiderman-scaled.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"2560\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"1389\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Philip Conneller\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:creator\" content=\"@casinoorgphilc\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:site\" content=\"@Casino_Org\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Philip Conneller\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"2 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.casino.org\/news\/academic-study-says-daily-fantasy-sports-is-skill-not-gambling\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.casino.org\/news\/academic-study-says-daily-fantasy-sports-is-skill-not-gambling\/\",\"name\":\"Academic Study Says Daily Fantasy Sports is Skill Not Gambling\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.casino.org\/news\/#website\"},\"primaryImageOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.casino.org\/news\/academic-study-says-daily-fantasy-sports-is-skill-not-gambling\/#primaryimage\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.casino.org\/news\/academic-study-says-daily-fantasy-sports-is-skill-not-gambling\/#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\/\/www.casino.org\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/05\/schneiderman-scaled.jpg\",\"datePublished\":\"2018-05-01T22:00:10+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2018-05-02T08:13:50+00:00\",\"author\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.casino.org\/news\/#\/schema\/person\/58769b72851c8cf117fb58ca150ebf8b\"},\"description\":\"Kansas State University professor concludes daily fantasy sports are games of skill after losing 35 contests in a row using a random model designed to simulate a completely unskilled player.\",\"breadcrumb\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.casino.org\/news\/academic-study-says-daily-fantasy-sports-is-skill-not-gambling\/#breadcrumb\"},\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"ReadAction\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/www.casino.org\/news\/academic-study-says-daily-fantasy-sports-is-skill-not-gambling\/\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.casino.org\/news\/academic-study-says-daily-fantasy-sports-is-skill-not-gambling\/#primaryimage\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.casino.org\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/05\/schneiderman-scaled.jpg\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/www.casino.org\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/05\/schneiderman-scaled.jpg\",\"width\":2560,\"height\":1389,\"caption\":\"New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman prosecuted DraftKings and FanDuel in 2016 for illegal gambling. 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