To one Washington lawmaker, there is no difference between daily fantasy sports sites like DraftKing and FanDuel advertising their games and El Chapo peddling heroin.
Meet Christopher Hurst, a democrat representing the 31st Legislative District in Washington. He and colleague David Sawyer introduced a bill last week in which they posited daily fantasy sports games are won “almost entirely by the element of chance rather than the element of skill,” as pointed out by Brent Holloway of dailyfantasytalk.com.
If the bill were to pass, then anyone operating a daily fantasy sports game would be considered a Class C felon, subject to a fine of up to $10,000, not to mention up to five years in prison.
Yeah, these guys aren’t messing around. That said, Hurst did acknowledge their main targets are the two giants, DraftKings and FanDuel, in an interview with Jason Rantz KIRO radio host.
To help us understand the seriousness with which they are approaching daily fantasy sports, Hurst launched into a comparison that many will likely find hard to stomach.
“What we have here are a couple of companies that are stealing money from the people who play, running horribly misleading and untrue advertising, and actually taking bets in the state, which is a felony every time they do it.”
“This is no different than El Chapo down in Mexico advertising heroin or methamphetamine on our airways a thousand times a day to get kids to try it.”
Wait a second…
Did he really just compare DraftKings and FanDuel to El Chapo?
Yes. Yes, he did.
Perhaps because he knows DraftKings and FanDuel won’t retaliate, he took a huge shot at the industry as “one of the most horrifically run criminal enterprises parading as a legitimate business that I’ve ever seen.”
States all around the nation are ruling that daily fantasy sports constitutes gambling. This is a topic that should be open for serious debate.
Hurst and Sawyer, though, aren’t going to win many hearts and minds to their cause by approaching the topic in this way, one must conclude. Framing any argument by making such ludicrous comparisons only serves to make one the butt of a joke rather than someone to be taken seriously.