Our View: It’s time to examine how we play fantasy sports

Fantasy football, once a fun activity done amongst family, friends and co-workers, has slowly crept into the realm of major monetary implications. Earlier this week, news broke that a new form of insider trading between two of the major fantasy football hosts, FanDuel and DraftKings. An employee accidentally leaked inside information from DraftKings, where the content manager works, and the miscue revealed the same employee won $350,000 from FanDuel. In a small-scale setting, it wouldn’t be a huge deal to trade “insider” information between siblings at a cookout, but on this big-money stage, this cripples the perception of these games.

Although both companies defended their integrity in a joint statement and claim the information wasn’t used to give the employee a competitive advantage, we argue that the fantasy sports movement has gone too far. We won’t know how severe a blow these companies and the fantasy market will take–that’ll be determined by the number of competitors in the coming weeks–but we do know that it’s time to start being skeptical of how far this whole process has gone.