Daily fantasy sports operators propose self-regulatory agency; Illinois DFS bill

Daily fantasy sports operators have announced the formation of a new self-regulatory body in the hopes of warding off stricter oversight by state and federal government agencies.

On Tuesday, former acting US Secretary of Labor Seth Harris announced that he’d been tasked with leading the Fantasy Sports Control Agency (FSCA), a group formed by the Fantasy Sports Trade Association (FSTA) to ensure “ethics and integrity” in the DFS industry.

Harris told Bloomberg News that the FSTA had asked for his involvement “to ensure that it’s not a sham, that it’s not a fake, that it’s not just a publicity stunt.” Harris claimed the FSCA would be a “freestanding” body, independent of the FSTA, whose board includes execs from DFS market leaders DraftKings and FanDuel.

The DFS industry is currently the subject of multiple state and federal law enforcement investigations into the legality of DFS following DraftKings’ data leak controversy earlier this month. Since the controversy broke, multiple state and federal politicians have called for increased oversight of the unregulated DFS industry, the most prominent of which involved Nevada declaring that DFS operators needed gambling licenses.