The daily fantasy sports conundrum

The first U.S. Congressional hearing on daily fantasy sports (DFS) sports took place this past week. Officially labeled "Daily Fantasy Sports: Issues and Perspectives" the hearing was a complete waste of time. Shocking, right?

The one effective part of the hearing was reigniting the debate around the legality of DFS and sports gambling as a whole.

Quickly, DFS operates like so, you pay an entry fee into a contest that can range anywhere from 50 cents to $1,300. You select from a pool of actual NFL, NBA, NHL, MLB players, they score points for you and you try to beat out the rest of the competition in order to bring home the most money.

Sounds like gambling, you put up money with the hopes of winning money.

Since DFS is gambling how are sites, like Draft Kings and Fan Dual, legal? Like any determined business they exposed a loophole. They declared that daily fantasy sports is skill-based and back in 2010 a judge ruled in favor of the skill-based argument, therefore making it legal. Meanwhile gambling on the outcome of games is still illegal throughout the country, with the exception of Las Vegas.

To solve and put this rather trivial debate to rest, there needs to be a distinction within gambling. This isn't a black or white issue there are layers here and all it requires is putting a few brain cells to work. DFS is skill-based gambling but so is taking the point spread or over/under of a Denver Broncos game. If you want to be successful it's going to take hours of research.

If you're having a hard time believing picking the spread or over/under is skill-based here's a challenge for you. For four weeks pick the spread and/or over/under in any sport and keep a record of your wins and losses. At the end of the four weeks tally up those wins and losses and figure out your success rate. If you're at 56 percent or above you may have found your true calling. If you're anywhere from 55 percent to 53 percent you're doing alright but by all means stay at your current job. Anything below 53 percent and you're breaking even or broke.

With those kinds of margins it is rather clear that skill is involved. Sure there will be times when things might break your way but for sustained success, like with anything in life, it takes hours of work.

To be successful at DFS it takes the same amount of work. Depending on the sport, contest size or type, your strategy will change frequently. There is a mountain of data and "expert" advice to shift through each day. Staying successful is just as difficult as getting there, your strategy has to quickly evolve to keep your distance from the pack and 1.25 of a point can be the difference of $1,500.

The one criticism of DFS that has merit is regulation. Regulation might be a dirty word in this Tea-Party area but with the amount of money flying around regulation is needed. It's the only way to bring a sense of assurance to those playing that they aren't running into Bruce the Shark's polar opposite brother.

Regulation is where sports gambling has the edge on DFS. They already have the measures in place to protect the consumers from the sharks.

Skill-based gambling should be legal throughout the U.S. and with so many states, including Wyoming, looking for any kind of new revenue streams, here's an option. By no means is it a cure all but something that would help.

And if one more politician grandstands about the morality of gambling, they should be forced to resign from office on the spot. Hypocrisy has been one of those words watered-down through the years, along with epic, hate and literally. But this is true hypocrisy at work. There are only six states in the Union without a lottery. The other 44 states not only have them but promote them to the point that if you aren't playing you're shorting on your civic duty. The lottery is gambling at its most intellectually bankrupt, there is no skill involved only chance and a future scandal in the works.

The morality around gambling is pointless, that ship sailed off into the distance long, long ago. The time has come to stop with the faux outrage over DFS and sports gambling. Make sports gambling legal, just like DFS, across all 50 states, bring in regulation like there is on Wall Street, punish those who infringe upon the rules, unlike Wall Street, and allow the states to develop the new revenue streams.

Agree? Disagree? Email Alex Kuhn at [email protected].