Robert Bowman is currently president and CEO of Major League Baseball Advanced Media. He is also believed to be one of the finalists to become Baseball's next commissioner, although he is still considered a long shot. Thus, his views on the daily fantasy sports marketplace (for-money fantasy sports contests that last just a single day) could play an important role in shaping the industry's future.
Just over one year ago Bowman was a vocal opponent of daily fantasy games, perhaps even more so than any other executive in the professional sports industry. Although Major League Baseball had sold advertising space to daily fantasy companies as early as February 2013, Bowman claimed doing so was never by design. In fact, he told The New York Times last March that he viewed daily fantasy as “akin to a flip of the coin, which is the definition of gambling.”
Since then, however, Bowman has slowly warmed to daily fantasy -- now emerging as one of the hobby's biggest advocates. The first sign of Bowman's change occurred through an under the radar sponsorship agreement, in which Major League Baseball endorsed one of the start-up daily fantasy sports websites as the "Official Mini Game of MLB.com." The sponsorship agreement also allowed the company's employees to write articles on the Major League Baseball website promoting strategies for daily fantasy sports.
Bowman has now gone ever further. Yesterday, he told Joe Drape of the New York Times that he currently views daily fantasy sports as "games of skill [that] adhere to the federal law." In the article, Drape seems to imply that Bowman has not ruled out Major League Baseball's support for "cash tournaments or other formats in which money is at stake" -- a dramatic change in philosophy from where both he and Major League Baseball stood just a year and a half ago.
With a powerful Baseball executive such as Bowman now standing behind daily fantasy sports, it seems that new entrants into the marketplace do not need to fear Major League Baseball encouraging the prosecution of their contests. Although this does not mitigate any of the federal or state risks associated with daily, play-for-cash gaming, it seems to remove at least one major obstacle that has long dissuaded some large companies from entering the daily fantasy marketplace -- the perception of Major League Baseball's wrath.
Bowman's more favorable view toward daily fantasy sports may ultimately invite some of the larger and more reputable fantasy sports websites to enter into the daily space in partnership with Major League Baseball. One company that presumably could enter the daily fantasy space easily is
Another company that could theoretically enter the daily marketplace is
Of course, all of these new possibilities for daily fantasy baseball rely heavily on Bowman becoming Major League Baseball's next commissioner, or at least remaining CEO of Major League Baseball Advanced Media under a fantasy-friendly commissioner. These possibilities also rely on the continued lack of federal and state challenges to daily fantasy sports contests -- something that remains far less certain as daily fantasy sports continues to move into riskier market segments, and the casino lobby spends increasing funds fighting against the proliferation of online fantasy sports games.
_________________________________________
Marc Edelman is an Associate Professor of Law at the City University of New York's Baruch College, Zicklin School of Business, where he has published more than 25 law review articles on sports law matters, including "A Short Treatise on Fantasy Sports and the Law."
In addition, he is an adjunct professor at Fordham Law School, and a legal consultant on sports, antitrust, gaming and intellectual property matters. Nothing contained in this article should be construed as legal advice.
Follow me on twitter here
