There’s a lot not to like about the bludgeoning onslaught of fantasy football websites and the emerging business model they represent.  Here are my top ten reasons to view this trend with disgust.

The pervasive saturation of television commercials is a downer when you’re trying to watch a game. Where did DraftKings and FanDuel come from, and why are they suddenly dominating the airtime?  It feels like they’re shouting at you.


It all revolves on the dollars. The entire pitch is how you can cash in on the millions and millions being paid out every week.  It has nothing to do with being a fan, or enjoying the game, or engaging in a friendly rivalry with your acquaintances.  You could be betting on anything.  It has all the football appeal of a slot machine.


It’s a sucker bet. The chances of making money are comparable to winning the lottery.  Testimonials from winners are misleading – sure, seems like a regular guy, could be me.  But if they interviewed all the losers, it would be around the clock coverage on every channel.


There’s reason to question the fairness of the wagering. They rely on extracting a massive flow of dollars from a broad swath of the populace wanting to get in on the action described in all those advertisements, but the winnings are skewed heavily in favor of a small cadre of repeat hitters.  There are ongoing investigations, and one of the disturbing allegations is that employees of FanDuel and DraftKings are winning big on each other’s sites.


The league is complicit. The two main sites are not owned by the NFL, but there are saucy endorsement agreements and a ton of paid advertising during televised games.  Dollars are flowing back, at least indirectly, to team owners.  This is turning into a very lucrative side business for the league.


It’s already engendering a secondary wave of parasitic escalators. Once you take the step of giving a daily fantasy site a try, the coaxing begins to increase your investment.  Helpful experts line up to provide you an edge with their tips and advice, for a fee.  Yes, you can play a low-stakes round, but for just a little higher ante you can play for a much bigger pot.  You’re encouraged to chase your losses with more expensive efforts to increase your chances for a larger payoff.


It infects the game coverage. The game-time updates that rotate on the screen no longer focus on which teams are winning, by how much and in what quarter.  Instead, it’s packed with stats about the fantasy-relevant performers for each team.  If you miss the five seconds they show the actual score for a game you care about, it’s ten minutes before it rolls around again.


It skirts the edge of legality. Gambling is at least regulated if not illegal most places, and this quacks like a duck.  I understand online betting on horse races is prohibited, though that similarly involves judging the anticipated performance of athletic competitors, where sophisticated bettors seek out the undervalued and make calculated wagers on longshots.  Betting on the outcome of football games, too, is unlawful, though apparently there’s a loophole for gambling on the constituent components that add up to an entire game.


It poses a risk of undermining the integrity of the game. With this much money revolving on circumstances that are only tangential to the outcome of the game, and the league engaged in fostering its market penetration, it’s not hard to envision the manipulation of fantasy stats infecting decisions on the field.  In the fourth quarter of a lopsided game, do the starters stay on the field?  Makes a difference to the fantasy spreadsheet.


It takes the fun out of a harmless pastime. I played in a fantasy league with some colleagues awhile back and enjoyed it a lot.  We were all football fans.  It made me care about some games that would otherwise lack interest.  It was fun to see who came out ahead each week, and as the season progressed.  There’s nothing wrong with that.  But it’s sad to see a group activity of such unoffending stripe become the cynical platform for a money-sucking industry fueled by a blitzkrieg of hard-sell TV commercials.