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 [email protected].
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UFC 200, which will be held at MGM Grand in Las Vegas this weekend, just lost another headlining fight. Interim light heavyweight champion Jon Jones was suspended after a potential doping violation on Wednesday, so his bout against Daniel Cormier was scrapped. Cormier will fight Anderson Silva instead.
White said he has not spoken to Jones yet and that he wasn’t aware whether the substance in question was a performance-enhancing drug.
A heavyweight fight between Brock Lesnar and Mark Hunt will now headline UFC 200, which takes place Saturday at T-Mobile Arena.
Tennessee’s law that legalized daily fantasy sports took effect July 1. A blog post published by the Knoxville Mercury’s The Daily Dumpster discusses the move.
So state legislators changed the law, becoming the third state this year to create a legal avenue for fantasy sports companies to operate in the state. Only a few other types of gambling are permitted in Tennessee, including the state lottery and some types of fund raising events designed to benefit a nonprofit organization.
State officials have not yet announced how much those licensing feeds may be for fantasy sports company. There is no requirement for players to obtain a license or register with the state. Indiana and Virginia, two other states with similar laws, require a $50,000 licensing fee.
RJ Bell of Pregame.com hired Peter Theil’s lawyer to threaten Deadspin with legal action to demand retraction of an article published in late June about his business.
RJ Bell, the “Vegas oddsmaker” in charge of the sports betting website Pregame.com, and subject of a lengthy investigation by Ryan Goldberg on Gawker’s sister website Deadspin, has enlisted Charles J. Harder—the same lawyer who has threatened Gawker over Ashley Feinberg’s reporting on Donald Trump’s hair—to demand a retraction of the article.
Two William Hill racebooks in Las Vegas introduced virtual horse racing to American gamblers.
The races, already popular with bookmakers in the U.K., where they are also offered over the internet, go off every five minutes and feature computer generated horses battling it out to the wire. For the U.S. version, famed announcer Tom Durkin provides the calls. The fields consist of eight to 12 horses and costumers can make win, place, show, exacta and trifecta wagers. There are no past performances available and the odds are fixed. The lower the horses odds are the higher the chance it will win the “race.”
Legal Sports Report published an article outlining all of the sports betting busts of 2016.
An examination of nearly a dozen sports gambling busts in the first six months of 2016 alone indicates that illegal sports betting activity is happening consistently, is facilitated through a complex mixture of money laundering, front businesses and offshore websites, and often involves additional criminal activity not related to sports betting.
The Golf Digest Podcast invited Westgate Las Vegas SuperBook’s golf oddsmaker Jeff Sherman to discuss setting lines for the British Open.
Jeff joined us to discuss his process for setting the lines for a tournament, what mistakes gamblers typically make, and who he likes at the British Open.
A controversy broke out early this week in the eSports community when popular CS:GO streamers promoted a “skin gambling” website as if they were just users — but were exposed as actually owning the site.
Valve is already embroiled in a class action lawsuit over whether its crate-and-key system of skin drops—and the ability to indirectly trade skins for cash—should be classed and regulated as gambling. This case is more obviously egregious.
YouTubers Trevor ‘TmarTn’ Martin and Tom ‘ProSyndicate’ Cassell ran a number of videos—several now set to private—in which they would gamble weapon skins on CSGO Lotto and win. Sometimes they would win big, resulting in videos with titles like “HOW TO WIN $13,000 IN 5 MINUTES”.