Some of the factors that has lead to the growth of fantasy sports would include the increase in computing power to able to handle the workload of fantasy sports calculations and the content management system that provides easy to use fantasy games to the masses.
Another factor that is also helping power the recent surge in daily fantasy sports popularity the classification of fantasy sports as not gambling at the Federal level. This is done through Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act of 2006 that specifically carves out that fantasy sport is game of skill and not game of change as in gambling.
This protection at the federal level has seen similar protection at the state level with only a handful of states that have not explicitly deemed it legal for residents of states to win money from participating in fantasy sports. The FSTA is continuing to expand the reach at the state level and have lobbyist working with state governments to covert the remaining states.
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The FSTA has though recently ratcheted up their lobbying presence for a new bill in congress called the Restoration of America's Wire Act. The bill introduced by Lindsey Graham of South Carolina and Jason Chaffetz of Utah is designed to put a definitive end to gambling online. The ramifications could be far and wide if fantasy sports was defined as gambling or if fantasy sports was not specifically excluded from a definition of gambling in the bill.
The bill is designed to curtail the recent legalization of online gambling in states such as New Jersey, Delaware, and Nevada when the 2011 Department of Justice decision to reinterpret the Wire Act to allow for some online gambling in sports.
On onside you have Sheldon Adelson, owner of the Las Vegas Sands Corp, supporting the ban on online gambling to attract more visitors to the casino and the other you have state advocates that believe that regulated online gambling can be a source of revenue and that banning online gambling would just lead to a black market. In the middle of all this would be fantasy sports and the question if the fantasy sports itself is gambling and the possibility that the recent growth in the sport could be derailed because of political legislation.
