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You know things are bad when MSNBC’s resident nerd (and we mean that in a good way) Chris Hayes devotes a good ten minutes discussing a scandal in Daily Fantasy Sports.
That’s exactly what happened Tuesday night as the debacle that occurred at one of the largest DFS sites, DraftKings, made headlines at nearly every media outlet during the past 48 hours. Even local news stations like our own CBS 4 here in Miami covered the story.
A quick rundown of what transpired just in case you’ve been living under a rock since Monday.
It was revealed to the mainstream media on Monday – helped along by the New York Times - that an employee of DraftKings with access to insider information won $350,000 in a FanDuel contest. At the time, neither company had a policy regarding its employees playing on competing websites. Once outed, they immediately changed their tune.
DraftKings is yet to even fire the employee who has nearly taken down an entire industry.
“If I had been running the company he would have been fired on the spot,” remarked Marc Lesnick, organizer of the Daily Fantasy Sports Expo in Miami, which is hosting its next event March 3-4.
A little too little too late some would argue, including New York’s Attorney General General Eric T. Schneiderman. He’s demanding the names, job titles and descriptions of any employees who aggregate and compile a wide range of data that perhaps could be used to gain a personal advantage — including ownership percentages and pricing algorithms. Both DraftKings and FanDuel, which maintain offices in Manhattan, have until Oct. 15 to respond.
As if things couldn’t get any worse, the woman placed in charge of directing the narrative of the story it turns out was a former disgraced PR flak discharged after she tweeted a racial comment about visiting Africa and hoping not to get AIDS.
Alas, she was just kidding. “I’m white”, the PR head added at the time, inferring that only Black people in Africa get AIDS.
We can’t make this stuff up.
Discussion of the incident appears below via a couple of top media outlets.
- Aaron Goldstein, Gambling911.com
