Investors have bet much, much more that daily fantasy sites are here to stay. It's not only the participants who have a lot riding on that outcome. As the heart of the country's gambling industry, Nevada could be a bellwether for the future of daily fantasy sports. But Nevada's decision to require such sites to have gambling licenses is likely to be much more momentous, as one industry website noted. In April, the attorney general of Kansas determined, for all intents, that daily fantasy sports are legal. We hadn’t reached that point in the evolution of our law because this technology and the industry was so new.”

“We need a court case, either a prosecution under the state’s gambling laws, or a civil lawsuit, or some live controversy, that tees up the issue for a court. The fourth category, the 'gambling instinct test,' simply holds that if an activity 'appeals to gambling instinct,' regardless of whether skill or chance is dominant, it should be illegal.īut daily fantasy sports won't likely be subjected to any of those tests in a state, Wallach says, unless that state feels pressure to apply such a standard-pressure that usually comes from legal cases. The 'material element test' says that if chance has more than an incidental effect on a game, that game should be considered illegal. Then there’s the 'any chance test': If it is determined that there is any modicum of chance involved in a game, it would be considered illegal. Most states follow the “predominant purpose test': If skill predominates in a game, it should be considered legal, while if chance predominates, a game should be considered illegal. States apply any of four main gambling tests to varying degrees to determine whether games are legal.

Game that require luck