Fantasy Football Continues to Resemble Online Gambling

While online casinos, poker rooms, and Internet gambling sites face a hard line by the US government, fantasy football wagering continues to enjoy an undisturbed existence.

The burgeoning fantasy football business continues to appear to the casual observer to be another form of online gambling, but there is an important difference. Federal authorities do not seem to care to harass and persecute fantasy operators out of business, despite the charge for running statistical updating sites that enable participants to track who is winning the money they all anted up.

Time magazine says the average charge for a player entering a fantasy football league is $73. While some sites offer free basic services, many, such as CBS Sportsline, charge a fee to minister to the league's drafting and scoring needs.

Further, even the free sites like Yahoo! advertise upgrades for a fee, giving access to up-to-the-minute scoring and insider predictions on player performance.

Other sites operate like tout sheets, except instead of predicting game results, they predict yardage and touchdowns generated by individual players. Like gambling sites selling their expert, "can't-miss" picks, these stat advisers charge for their information.

Players involved in the game have a monetary prize for the top finishers an estimated 78 percent of the time, fantasy experts say. That number rises even higher when only including leagues at pay sites, jumping to 94 percent. The prize is created by an entry fee for all players, not so different from poker, which takes money from all participants and rewards the winner with the pot.

So why is an industry that accepts a rake (site membership fees) and redistributes money on a gambling basis allowed in a country whose Department of Justice insists there is no such thing as legal online gambling? Perhaps it could be the billion dollars or more Time says the fantasy field generates, driven by millions of players who might cast an unfavorable eye on lawmakers messing with their hobby.

"Fantasy play is just a way for gamblers to make their bets last all season, while giving them an illusion of more personal control," said 20-year fantasy veteran Tim Hollings. "As for legality, if ESPN and CBS were booking bets, you could figure Congress would be doing an about-face on sports gambling. It's not about right or wrong, it's about control of dollars."