One of the big complaints about the embattled daily fantasy sector has been how it favors the few, particularly outlined in Jay Caspian Kang’s New York Times Magazine article earlier this month. The argument has been that despite the commercial blitz of how anyone can win money on these sites, it’s only a few experienced power users who are walking away with the majority of the pots, something that was further buttressed by October’s scandal where a DraftKings employee released player information early and went on to win $350,000 on FanDuel (leading to those companies banning staff from playing at other daily fantasy sites). Now, with countless states trying to regulate or shut down these sites, or even force them to reimburse users, DraftKings seems to be responding to some of the criticism, announcing that they’ll ban off-site automated lineup construction scripts that help power users enter hundreds of lineups, identify experienced users, limit the numbers of entries from one user in some pots, and offer newbie-friendly contests. From David Purdum at ESPN:
DraftKings will begin offering automation tools on its site Friday in an attempt to make sure all users have access to them.
“These scripting tools, prior to us launching them on the site, were available to everyone,” DraftKings chief marketing officer Janet Holian said. “You could easily Google them or find them on RotoGrinders, along with a lot of places. Moving forward, we would like the tools to be consistently used, only the ones that are on our site and not off site. We’re prohibiting the off-site tools moving forward.”
DraftKings is still discussing what criteria will be used to designate experienced players and how they will be identified. Holian said, as an example, a symbol or a badge could be used to identify the experienced players. The identification of experienced players is expected to begin in the “near future,” the site said.
…Other features the site has instituted include beginner-only contests for participants who have fewer than 50 entries in a sport and a matchup blocker that will allow players to avoid facing certain players in head-to-head matchups.
“When you look at the package holistically, I think it really defines just how much effort we’re putting into building a contest that has all the bells and whistles out there possible to make the contest as transparent as possible and give you the most control so that you can pick and choose what you want to do and when you want to do it,” Holian said. “We have to make sure that we’re making it clear on the site.
“We’re also trying to educate others to help us make sure people understand all the different options that they have. We want to make sure the experience they have playing in a contest is as fun and entertaining.”
The question is how much of an impact this will really have, though. Banning off-site scripts will mean everyone has access to the same tools, but it’s still only going to be power users who want to submit hundreds of entries. A matchup blocker’s nice, but only matters if you specifically know a problematic user you don’t want to face. The badges have some potential, and may help indicate that certain contests are particularly veteran-filled, and the beginner-only contests may have some value, but some of the concerns raised by Caspian Kang and others may still be present. Here’s the key part of what he wrote:
I came across a different sort of problem: a rapacious ecosystem in which high-volume gamblers, often aided by computer scripts and optimization software that allow players to submit hundreds or even thousands of lineups at a time, repeatedly take advantage of new players, who, after watching an ad, deposit some money on DraftKings and FanDuel and start betting. Both companies mostly looked the other way. And, when evidence of the competitive advantages enjoyed by these high-volume players became too overwhelming for the companies to ignore, DraftKings and FanDuel enacted rules that in the end are likely to protect the high-volume players rather than regulate them. …
The betting economy that has been created is highly unstable and corrupt. One critic I spoke to was Gabriel Harber, a well-known D.F.S. podcaster and writer who has worked in the D.F.S. industry since its inception and goes by the handle CrazyGabey. He has come forward to discuss the rampant exploitation in D.F.S.’s betting economy.
“The idea that these sites exist so that regular guys can make a lot of money playing daily fantasy sports is a lie,” Harber told me. “FanDuel and DraftKings are optimized for power players to rape and pillage regular players over and over again.”
Will these new measures do enough to change that, and to convince regular players daily fantasy is worth it? We’ll have to wait and see.
[ESPN]
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