Sportsbooks Select Enterprise Over Accountable Gaming Norms

Amid their prediction market launches, DraftKings, Fanatics and FanDuel have wavered on some accountable gaming protocols they as soon as held up as examples of their supposed altruism.

At launch, the businesses have solely introduced a number of the anti-addiction instruments from their cellular sportsbooks into their standalone prediction market apps. While customers can set betting limits and lock their accounts within the new apps, all launched final month, the platforms didn’t instantly present playing habit hotline data, session time information or the identical betting historical past visualizations.

In an announcement Thursday evening, a FanDuel spokesperson mentioned the corporate, which launched its prediction market app in 5 states on Dec. 22, can be including a assist hotline to its in-app buyer safety suite “shortly” and had simply put it within the wonderful print of its web site. After this story revealed Friday, FanDuel confirmed the hotline had additionally been put in its app.

The erosion of accountable gaming protections has been a direct real-world consequence of DraftKings, Fanatics and FanDuel needing to name prediction markets—an change format for betting—a monetary asset in an effort to provide them to the general public. The monetary asset label pushes prediction markets towards the unique jurisdiction of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), a federal company, and grants immunity from state playing legal guidelines and taxes on gross betting income.

Under the Commodity Exchange Act, the CFTC just isn’t supposed to allow occasion contracts primarily based upon “gaming.” As a end result, firms concerned with prediction markets might lose authorized credibility in the event that they implement a full suite of playing habit instruments, as doing so could be seen as an admission that the product falls exterior the CFTC’s purview.

DraftKings, Fanatics and FanDuel resist point out of “gambling” and “gaming” at each flip inside their prediction market apps and declare customers are “trading,” not “betting.” That’s regardless of prediction markets visually resembling a sportsbook and equally being structured so the common retail person loses cash. The hotline FanDuel simply applied into its app is run by the National Council on Problem Gambling (NCPG)—however references to it don’t embody point out of “gambling” or “gaming.”

By prioritizing the enterprise success of a brand new enterprise over accountable gaming norms, DraftKings, Fanatics and FanDuel have acted hypocritically.  

Cole Wogoman, director of presidency relations for the NCPG, a distinguished habit hotline operator and advocacy group, wrote in an announcement that his group “is urging prediction market operators to include the same core safeguards expected of regulated sportsbooks.”

“From a problem gambling perspective, buying and selling futures contracts through prediction markets is functionally gambling, particularly when those contracts are tied to sports, an activity long associated with gambling,” he added. “The legal classification of prediction markets is irrelevant to whether it can contribute to a gambling problem.”

For years, alongside different state-regulated sportsbook operators, DraftKings, Fanatics and FanDuel instructed their sportsbook habit sources have been put in place at the least partially on ethical grounds—not simply due to strict state licensing necessities or public notion. The firms pointed to the instruments as examples of legalized sports activities betting creating safer circumstances for customers than offshore sportsbooks.

From the beginning, playing habit hotline data was their most ubiquitous assist possibility, seen on each state-licensed sportsbook’s advertising materials, homepage and assist middle. If you hearken to sports activities podcasts, you probably know the cellphone numbers from the barrage of advert reads.

“From the moment someone registers a DraftKings account, our top priority is ensuring every user has an engaging, fun and, most importantly, a safe experience,” mentioned then-DraftKings chief compliance officer Tim Dent in a 2019 statement as the corporate unveiled a partnership with the NCPG.

In its sportsbook app, FanDuel, additionally a associate of the NCPG, touts the group as providing “hope and guidance for change.” This previous September, three months earlier than launching prediction markets, FanDuel introduced former NCPG govt director Keith Whyte as a strategic advisor. In a 2024 interview, Whyte instructed Sportico that prediction markets have been playing and advertising them as the rest may very well be dangerous.

In a direct message Thursday evening, Whyte wrote that whereas he’s an advisor to FanDuel, he doesn’t communicate for the corporate. Whyte mentioned there are “no meaningful psychological distinctions” between conventional sportsbooks and prediction markets relating to habit threat. But he claimed the trio of sportsbook operators who’ve entered prediction markets are displaying larger shopper care than competing monetary know-how companies, equivalent to Kalshi and Robinhood.

Whyte mentioned “it is also important to recognize this is all new and there are differences between the verticals,” including, “We can’t just assume one size fits all with [responsible gaming]. For example the messaging and wording will likely need to be changed to resonate with traders.”

In an emailed assertion, a Fanatics spokesperson wrote, “Fanatics Markets offers consumer protections and equips customers with tools to help manage exposure, trade responsibly and make informed trading decisions. The tools allow customers to set deposit limits, session limits, timeouts and self-exclusion.”

DraftKings declined to remark.

Because CFTC-regulated prediction markets have solely applied sports activities bets up to now 12 months, complete prediction market habit research are sparse. Anecdotally, although, customers have mentioned prediction markets current related pitfalls as conventional sportsbooks. The subreddit for Kalshi, the main U.S. prediction market platform by quantity, options customers expressing regret for overconfidence and chasing losses—hallmarks of downside playing.

The NPCG doesn’t take a stance on whether or not CFTC-regulated sports activities betting must be allowed. But the group takes challenge with the discrepancies which have emerged between accountable gaming requirements below the state and federal betting frameworks, Wogoman mentioned in an interview final fall. Making accountable gaming instruments the identical throughout choices is “what it would take to put people’s mind at ease and say we’re taking this seriously,” Wogoman added.

On one hand, the platitudes of conventional sportsbook operators fracturing below a droplet of enterprise strain displays how the world works. It is probably extra of a dog-bites-man story than man-bites-dog. You’ll see related issues throughout industries.

Yet shifting the goalposts on what accountable gaming ought to appear like merely out of company comfort feels notably craven, given the excessive stakes in combatting playing habit, which a number of research suggest is being identified within the U.S. at a a lot larger price than earlier than the Supreme Court’s Murphy v. NCAA choice in 2018 opened the floodgates for legalized sports activities betting.

The accountable gaming about-face additionally places an incident from final 12 months into a special perspective.

When my colleague Anthony Crupi wrote an opinion column in January 2025 that known as the phrase “responsible gaming” an oxymoron, a number of business sources got here to me to complain. I used to be instructed how significantly sportsbooks deal with these sources. I had some sympathy then, however the thrust of his argument—that “responsible gaming” is motivated by optics—has aged effectively.

Regardless, the column was Anthony’s opinion, one which loads of readers probably shared, and the reflexive pushback appeared approach excessive even then. Now the protests look ridiculous.

I received’t fake to know what accountable gaming ought to entail. I don’t know that anybody has an accurate reply there. But I do know that sportsbooks set requirements and at the moment are discarding them and not using a cause that has something to do with psychological well being.

And to be clear, that is removed from only a DraftKings, Fanatics or FanDuel challenge.

Prediction market change operators that don’t personal conventional sportsbooks, together with Kalshi, Polymarket and Crypto.com, created the blueprint for the “we’re not gambling” argument. Like DraftKings, Fanatics and FanDuel, their apps don’t precisely replicate the habit sources current at licensed cellular sportsbooks. (Kalshi has carried over some instruments that don’t explicitly reference “gaming,” equivalent to the power to set place limits.)

Novig, a prediction market platform that exists in a regulatory outer area that’s neither state nor federal, directs folks in want of assist to a online game habit group fairly than a playing one, presumably as one other tactic to keep away from specific affiliation with playing.

Meanwhile, firms that stay sportsbook-only with no prediction market product, equivalent to Caesars and MGM, might finally embrace prediction markets. They’ve been extra cautious with the emergence of change model betting due to their monetary stake in Las Vegas brick-and-mortar casinos, which might obtain punishment from Nevada regulators who fiercely oppose the rise of prediction markets.

That mentioned, I’d not be shocked if circumstances change they usually comply with the lead of FanDuel, Fanatics and DraftKings. Their prediction market endurance is probably going not the results of a superior ethical code.

At the top of the day, it’s simply enterprise.

(This story has been up to date to replicate FanDuel including the hotline to its app after publish.)