Colin A. Young
State House News Service
About a decade after they took off in popularity and kicked off a series of gambling expansions here, Attorney General Andrea Campbell has proposed a rewritten set of rules for the fantasy contests that made Boston-based DraftKings a household name.
The new regulations, which were proposed earlier this month and will be up for a public hearing next Wednesday, aim to shift the state's regulatory footing from the original 2016 framework in which daily fantasy sports contests were a hot, new trend in gaming that states moved to regulate after a proliferation of advertising, to one that acknowledges the dramatic changes in the state's legal gambling landscape since then, including the introduction of casino gaming and the legalization of sports wagering, which can sometime share a blurry border with fantasy contests.
"As fantasy contests and the online sports gaming landscape continue to evolve, our regulations must evolve with them," Campbell said in a statement. "These updated regulations strengthen consumer protections, promote fairness, and assure Massachusetts residents that they can participate in fantasy contests knowing that appropriate safeguards are in place."
Under the state's existing regime, "daily fantasy sports" are regulated. But under Campbell's new proposal, the regulations would instead cover a new category of "contest" that would include "[a]ny fantasy or simulated game or contest with one or more identifiable Participants competing against one or more other identifiable Participants, in which a Prize is always paid out or given to such winning Participant(s) and never kept by the Operator."
The AG's office said that the new definition is meant to "distinguish fantasy contests from sports wagering." As with the current framework, the contests would have to be a skill-based and based on the accumulated performance of multiple individuals, rather than a single player, team, or event.
Campbell's proposal also includes a new section that seeks to draw a clear line between fantasy contests and sports betting. Among 14 offerings that would be flatly off-limits for fantasy contests and treated as per se violations of the state's consumer-protection law: contests built to mimic single-game bets, parlays, teasers, over/unders, moneylines, or other formats defined as "sports wagering" in state law.
Campbell's proposal would also be more prescriptive about the responsible gaming tools, messaging and advertising, and youth protection that operators must build into their platforms; tighten requirements that operators face around account registration, operations, and reporting; clarify requirements related to data privacy and security; and require additional data retention from operators.
