With so much confusion over the legalities with sports and the Internet, our goal was to create games and set rules that comply fully with all laws in all jurisdictions. As a result, our games are compliant with the controversial UIGEA in 2006, and we don’t allow residents of certain areas to be eligible for prizes. What does that mean for you? Simple. It means that when you play here, you can play with confidence.

Premium fantasy sports is legal!

Some of this is legal mumbo-jumbo that doesn’t mean a whole lot to the average fantasy player. But it is important to know that we built our games to comply with all the rules. So if you have any doubts or questions about things you have seen or read, please read on.

Two recent newsworthy events have guided our decisions and also proven we have done our due diligence in ensuring we are running games that are legal and comply with all the rules on registration and prizing.

In June 2007, a judge in New Jersey threw out an argument that premium fantasy sports leagues – pools or contests where you pay money to play - were the same as illegal gambling. Judge Dennis Cavanaugh of the New Jersey District Court dismissed a lawsuit from a lawyer (who later became a professional gambler) after he claimed the big boys in fantasy sports - Viacom, CBS Corp., the Walt Disney Co., ESPN and the Sporting News – were accepting illegal wagers.

Charles Humphrey claimed that these companies operated illegal pay-for-play online fantasy sports leagues whose registration fees constituted wagers, according to a story on the Hollywood Reporter ESQ Web site. It was thrown out on procedural grounds, among other things, but Judge Cavanaugh also spoke in general terms: “As a matter of law, the entry fees for Defendants’ fantasy sports leagues are not ‘bets’ or ‘wagers’ because;
(1) the entry fees are paid unconditionally;
(2) the prizes offered to fantasy sports contestants are for amounts certain and are guaranteed to be awarded; and
(3) Defendants do not compete for the prizes.”

We are UIGEA-compliant

This New Jersey ruling spoke to the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act of 2006, a controversial federal law focused on online gambling and financing wagering accounts. That ruling carved out an exemption for fantasy sports leagues, after considerable lobbying by the professional sports leagues.

We have structured all of our games to fully comply with UIGEA which states (verbatim):
(ix) participation in any fantasy or simulation sports game or educational game or contest in which (if the game or contest involves a team or teams) no fantasy or simulation sports team is based on the current membership of an actual team that is a member of an amateur or professional sports organization (as those terms are defined in section 3701 of title 28) and that meets the following conditions:
(I) All prizes and awards offered to winning participants are established and made known to the participants in advance of the game or contest and their value is not determined by the number of participants or the amount of any fees paid by those participants.
(II) All winning outcomes reflect the relative knowledge and skill of the participants and are determined predominantly by accumulated statistical results of the performance of individuals (athletes in the case of sports events) in multiple real-world sporting or other events.
(III) No winning outcome is based--
(aa) on the score, point-spread, or any performance or performances of any single real-world team or any combination of such teams; or
(bb) solely on any single performance of an individual athlete in any single real-world sporting or other event.

So, while there may be some municipal or state- or provincial-level laws or edicts unknown to us, we have studied as many as possible that we know of. Play with confidence and play to win!