New Jersey casino launches DFS for money; Dodgers, Astros favorites to win World Series

Twice weekly, we’ll comb through as many articles, tweets and podcasts as we can find related to the world of sports betting and daily fantasy sports, and publish the good stuff here. 

Stumble upon something you think we should include? Email info@bettingtalk.com.

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A casino in New Jersey is now allowing visitors to play daily fantasy sports for money.

Resorts Casino Hotel on Monday launched FastPick, a daily fantasy sports game in which customers choose head-to-head player matchups of real-world athletes. If the customer’s slate of picks outperforms those assigned to the casino, the customer wins.

“I’m very excited about this new business,” Resorts president Mark Giannantonio told The Associated Press. “We expect it to be exciting for our online customers and, soon, for those who play at our casino. The idea has always been for the brick-and-mortar casino to be integrated as much as possible with our online business.”

The move marks the expansion of daily fantasy into a new casino market. But even as the activity has taken off across the country and abroad online, it has been slow to catch on at casinos in the United States. Steve Doty, a spokesman for the American Gaming Association, the casino industry’s national trade group, said the group does not know of casinos outside Nevada that offer daily fantasy games for money.


The Los Angeles Dodgers and Houston Dodgers came out of the All-Star break with the best odds to win the World Series.

The Dodgers are 3-1 to win the World Series at the Westgate SuperBook in Las Vegas, followed by the Houston Astros at 9-2. The Dodgers and Astros are co-favorites at both the MGM and South Point sportsbooks.

The Boston Red Sox (5-1), Washington Nationals (6-1) and Cleveland Indians (7-1) also are contenders with single-digit odds.

The defending-champion Chicago Cubs started the season as the consensus favorites, but after a disappointing start, they were overtaken in May by the Dodgers, Astros, Nationals and Indians. The Cubs are now listed at 12-1.


Mississippi passed a daily fantasy sports bill last year that also cleared a path for legal sports betting. Some legislators may not have realized the effect it would have on sports betting in the state and may revisit the issue now that the Supreme Court is set to look at New Jersey’s sports betting case.

But this appeared to fly under the radar of Mississippi leaders. A report last week by Mississippi Today sports columnist Rick Cleveland got more notice. Some leaders and rank-and-file lawmakers are questioning what happened, and what to do next.

“If the U.S. Supreme Court ruling creates the need to address sports gambling in Mississippi, the Gaming Commission will do so,” Bryant, a Republican, said in a statement. “I have serious concerns about the negative consequences of betting on sports.”

The bill didn’t mention sports betting, but it deleted a passage in the Gaming Control Act that prohibited casino wagering on athletic events or any events that don’t take place on a casino’s premises.

Bryant’s office further stated, “We’re not convinced HB 967 opens the door for sports betting in Mississippi. That was not part of the calculation the governor used to arrive at his decision to sign it, and it certainly was not a back-door way of clearing the legal pathway for wagering on sports.”


A Las Vegas Review-Journal article speculates on the potential outcomes for Nevada of New Jersey’s sports betting case that is heading to the Supreme Court.

Should sports betting go national, just about everything will continue to flow through Las Vegas. Odds would still emanate from the local books and the rest of the country would continue to turn to Las Vegas for its wealth of knowledge about the industry.

There is one other theory about how Nevada sports books could be hurt by the Supreme Court’s review of Christie v. the NCAA. It’s a doomsday scenario outlined by legal experts Ryan Rodenberg and John Holden in an article in the Duke Law Review, “Sports betting has an equal sovereignty problem,” and reported earlier this month by Dustin Gouker in the Legal Sports Report.

Gouker reported that there are three likely outcomes to the Supreme Court’s review of the New Jersey case: that the court upholds the lower-court finding, effectively changing nothing; that the prohibition on sports gambling is struck down as unconstitutional, taking it off the books and enabling states to legalize sports betting; or that the court says the grandfathering of Nevada sports betting under the law is unconstitutional under the equal sovereignty doctrine, effectively banning sports betting everywhere, including Nevada.

That third outcome is the ultimate bad beat for the industry.