Keller @ Large: Fighting Online Fantasy Sports A Losing Battle

By Jon Keller, WBZ-TV

BOSTON (CBS) - You know the way it works – with success comes scrutiny, and, from your competitors, challenge.

So it's no surprise that the Nevada Gaming Control Board has ruled that those daily fantasy sports games - where you put up dough and pick players for your team hoping to win big bucks if they do well – are gambling games subject to their control, and can't do business in Nevada unless they get licensed like any other sports book.

This doesn't override the federal law exempting fantasy sports from the ban on internet gambling, but other states can follow Nevada's lead if they want. And I have no doubt states that rely heavily on revenues from other forms of gambling will do so.

There's big money at stake, and these fantasy sports sites have walked right in and started eating the lunch of the gambling establishment.

It reminds me of the way Craigslist came in and took most of the classified advertising money away from the newspaper industry, crippling their business model almost overnight.

"Creative destruction," they call it in the economics business, the process in which innovation replaces existing forms of commerce with new ones. And if the casino and sports book and lottery businesses somehow thought they were immune from that, they were sadly mistaken.

There aren't too many commercial or even social activities you can't perform more easily and cheaply online than in person.

Listen to Jon's commentary:

So the next time someone claims "oh, people will never get tired of doing (blank) the way they've always done it," think of newspapers, video-rental stores, and all the other businesses undercut by the internet, and realize that Nevada is fighting a losing battle.