So we may not be getting those skeezy Draft Kings ads on the bombcast for much longer

So everyones' favorite legal gray area gambling site Draft Kings is getting investigated by the FBI due to the seeming malfeasance (insider trading of a sort) that was uncovered last month.

If your unaware of what happened an employee of Draft Kings using insider information on drafts placed and won large sums of money on a near daily basis on rival draft site Fan duel. Winning as much as $350,000 a day.

Now a bit of info on why the whole fan draft concept is so fucking shady and unregulated. As of writing this fantasy drafts are considered not gambling because it's a "game of skill" not unlike how pinball machines were declared legal during prohibition, while drafts on the other hand, a base level of knowledge of current players teams and matchups will help a potential drafter it boils down to little more than gambling.

Here's a link to the verge about the current investigation. Link

Now look for around 2 or 3 years, well essentially since the whole daily draft thing started, I've just been waiting for something like this to happen as its essentially the same fucking thing that happened to all those poker sites 10 years ago.

Edit: and another thing the employee who did this technically did nothing wrong according to draft kings and as its completely unregulated at the moment he'll probably get off scott free unless the government does some legal schenanigans.

Good maybe we can replace them with ads for betting knives on CSGO matches. That's really the future.

I never blamed GB for Draft Kings/FanDuel sponsorship because I'm sure everything comes in an advertisement package and there isn't much say on which companies a place can choose from for its podcasts. Also, since no one is into sports -- except for Alex -- I assumed they didn't know the difference anyway.

But I'm glad if this means there's no more of it. It was shady from the start.

If the Draft Kings ads persist and you have a problem with them, all of you subscribers can listen to the ad-free Premium version. I do. The only reason I even know about the ads is from posts on the forums about them. From subscribers, I might add.

They could do like Bill Burr and call them bookies in the middle of reading the ad copy. That'd get rid of them, pretty sure.

The poker sites the US shut down are still all perfectly legal over here. America seems to hate the idea of legal, properly regulated gambling for some reason.

Which is why you end up with dodgy companies exploiting loopholes and creating 'new' unregulated markets for themselves.

I hope the guy gets off free if he wasn't technically breaking any laws, no matter how shady or unethical his deeds were. That just wouldn't be right.

Also, what's so skeezy about the ads, exactly? I listen to premium.

Every time I see those Draft Kings commercials, the winners look like those ass hole bros.

There's nothing wrong with the ads themselves. It's just the site itself which many people feel is kinda sleazy. That sentiment might not be the same in many places overseas, but in the US, there's a bit of a stigma associated with many forms of gambling. The way these sites present themselves tends to feel dishonest and deceptive, and there is a history of many gambling sites eventually being exposed as Ponzi schemes - lining their own pockets and not having sufficient funds to reward people their winnings.

Was it malfeasance for malfeasance's sake?

context

baesbawwllluhhh!!!

As somebody who never played a fantasy draft of...well anything, or talked to somebody about what goes into a fantasy draft other than "Watching football", I was a bit thrown off after hearing the Fan Duel/Draft Kings advertisements. I didn't really think about how the money factored into it. I just assumed it was a competition and...well there might be a better word for what it is, but let's just call it gambling.

Also, I'd love to hear more commercials about UNLIMITED ANIME!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! (and I'm already a member of Crunchy Roll. It's a pretty great site. You should sign up too for UNLIMITED ANIME!!!!!!!!!!!!!)

There's nothing skeezy about Draft Kings, that's any skeezier than what normal casinos do. You come there, you spend your money, they like to give you the appearance that you might win money so you stay there and keep spending money, but the vaaaaast majority of the time you will not because the house always wins.

yayyy now we can get MeUndies, Shari's Berries, and Mangrate ads!!

I still think people are actually more annoyed at the ubiquity of the Draft Kings/Fan Duel ads more than anything. They are everywhere across all advertising formats. Seems like they are blitzing on ads like crazy because they foresee a future where they may not be allowed to exist.

Anyone watch "The League" and notice the gross product placement on a recent episode?

we bill burr now boys

I'm just waiting for those nature box people to be revealed for the monsters they truly are...

"Honeycomb Sunflower Kernels is people!!"

It's only a matter of time.

I miss the wet wipe ads :(

Draft Kings and Fan Duel have always seemed sleazy, so this doesn't surprise me at all. What we need is something sleazier to take their place once fantasy betting is ruled illegal. That's right. The return of Extreme Restraints to the world of podcast advertising. The McElroys will never have to sell another ad again.

@mike: I can't listen to the premium feed, because it's not available on itunes.

I actually listen to the non premium because I find the ad reads they do actually entertaining....even the draft kings ones. I think they were best with Jeff + Vinny but still pretty good since Vinny moved.

But the whole draft kings thing in general always weirded me out. Keep in mind this is me knowing very little about it, or any fantasy sports stuff, but the whole thing always just seemed like gambling with a way of not having to be technically considered gambling, felt pretty shady.

Someone earlier said:

There's nothing skeezy about Draft Kings, that's any skeezier than what normal casinos do.

I actually disagree. At this point everyone who walks into a casino [should] knows how messed up a casino really is. However, draft kings is trying to make people think it is something else than what it really is, a gambling site [as far as it seems]. Even so, just because a casino does something, it doesn't lessen the skeezyness of something else doing it. You have to take them on their own merit.

I pay for premium but never listen to the premium cast because I'd rather hear the ads lol.

Draft Kings & Fan Duel redirect vital money away from state-funding lotteries.

Ok to explain why I think all this draft shit is skeezy as hell.

So gambling is fine as long as its a regulated taxed and watched over body to make sure that if someone puts money in they have as much a chance to win as anyone else. Draft sites like this exist in a legal grey area that means there is NO government oversight meaning shit like this could have been happening the whole time and they only found out about it now.

Also fuck any company that makes the crew read ad copy verbatim like let them sell your product the ads where they just shoot the shit about anime for 2:30 are great.

@mike: If people really have a problem with them and don't want to or can't subscribe, they should go to Midroll and complain to them as it's Midroll who are selling the ad space to Draft Kings etc.

I subscribe but I still listen to the non-premium version because the ads are pretty funny.

@chaser324: huh. Well it's pretty apparent how they make their money if you look at their 50/50-100 member contests: 100 entrants, top 45 win double the entry fee. That means 10% of the money in the contest doesn't go towards the prize pool. You enter knowing that the odds are stacked against you even if you know your stuff because the people that take risks and happen to have the right combination top the leader boards.

Some people win money and some people lose money. That's the game if you choose to play.

As it turns out, this exact same conversation has already been going on for quite some time in an existing topic about podcast ads. In the interest of keeping discussion centralized, and since this thread is turning into another discussion about whether Draft Kings is scummy or not, I'm closing this thread and asking anyone who really wants to continue discussing the matter to head on over to the more established topic:

http://www.giantbomb.com/forums/bombcast-32/why-do-all-podcast-ads-seem-sketchy-1773489/?page=3

thanks