College sports contests, under-21 players would be banned under new fantasy rules
Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey announced the new regulations Thursday.
If you want to put money on college sports in Massachusetts, you’ll have to find a bookie.
Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey’s proposed rules for daily fantasy sports companies include a restriction on offering games based on college sporting events. Under the regulation, those games would not be accessible to Massachusetts residents. Healey also banned players under age 21 from entering the contests.
“As a former college athlete, I don’t think it’s right that entities be able to establish an opportunity for people to play on the performance of college athletes,’’ said Healey, who captained Harvard’s basketball team. “This is amateur, this is college, these are student athletes, and they should not be used … by those who want to play daily fantasy sports.’’
Boston-based DraftKings and New York-based FanDuel, the two market leaders in daily fantasy sports, each offer college football and college basketball games. Neither company immediately responded to questions about how much of their business is based on those games.
Daily fantasy games allow users to win or lose money based on the performance of real-life athletes in a given day or week.
FanDuel said in a statement that Healey’s approach “makes a tremendous amount of sense,’’ but did not immediately respond to a question about the specific college sports ban. DraftKings called Healey’s plan “thoughtful and comprehensive,’’ but said it had “some concerns’’ with the proposed rules. The company did not specify its concerns.
The companies’ largest jackpots this week in college football and basketball are much smaller than their biggest pools for NFL and NBA games, suggesting the college games are not as popular for daily fantasy players as the professional games.
About 12.7 percent of daily fantasy sports players are aged between 18 and 24, according to a study by California-based gaming research firm Eilers Research earlier this year. About 5 percent of those players were under 21, Eilers Managing Director of Digital and Interactive Gaming Adam Krejcik estimated. The games are most popular with those aged 25 to 35, an age bracket that constitutes more than half of all players. DraftKings and FanDuel currently accept players 18 and older.
Healey’s regulations outlined a number of other rules geared at college students, including a ban on advertising at schools and colleges or at venues holding college or school sports events.
“We are at a time right now where students across this country are mired in debt,’’ Healey said Thursday. “I have real concerns about anything that would exacerbate students taking on more debt, in the form of credit, extended to play daily fantasy sports games.’’
Earlier this fall, the National Collegiate Athletic Association barred DraftKings and FanDuel from advertising during events like college basketball’s March Madness tournament.
Healey’s rules would also require options to prevent addictive gambling, daily fantasy contests for beginners and casual users that exclude professionalized players, disclosures in advertisements, and more. You can read them here.
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