In the emerging market of daily fantasy sports, BetAmerica made two significant announcements this past week. The company has launched FanEx Sports, a new daily fantasy sport contest where fantasy owners can win real dollars by betting on fantasy teams. In addition the company announced a deal to honor lost player balances from Fantazzle, a defunct daily fantasy sports site.
BetAmerica, known for online gambling in horse racing as well as greyhound betting, is based in San Francisco and has an estimated 35 employees. At it is launch, FanEx will feature NFL and MLB games and intends to add NBA games in the coming months.
BetAmerica will invite the 18,000 former Fantazzle players to join BetAmerica as well as fund the outstanding 1,200 player's balances of players from Fantazzle.
MY TAKE: Their is no ambiguity in the direction that BetAmerica is pursing. This well established gambling site has now ventured into daily fantasy sports market. BetAmerica is not providing a competitive game to ESPN season long fantasy game, but are concentrating on the daily fantasy sports market. They are also concentrating on the betting aspect of it.
We explore the legality of fantasy sports in this previous post. But it is interesting to note that BetAmerica put a disclaimer at the bottom of it's press release:
"Fantasy contests are legal activities under the 2006 Unlawful Internet Gaming Enforcement Act. BetAmerica does not offer fantasy sports games in Arizona, Illinois, Iowa, Louisiana, Montana, North Dakota, Oregon, Puerto Rico, Vermont and Washington. Players must be 18 years of age or older to compete."UIEGA is a federal law and although it may have stated that playing fantasy sports for profit is legal, specific states have the right to define fantasy sports and so far there is ambiguity in certain states if fantasy sports for profit is legal.
