ESPN’s Scott Van Pelt on Thursday night took on daily fantasy sports and the amount of TV advertising those outlets are buying, saying it feels like daily fantasy is the “hog running at warp speed to the butcher.” He said the “sheer gluttony and volume of activity creates a climate where some kind of correction seems inevitable.” Van Pelt: “I don’t mean with the leagues themselves, necessarily. I mean with everything associated with the concept: The people who want to get rich in a day, the TV networks, us, everyone else running more of their ads than anything else at the moment, the leagues who are hitching their wagon to them -- which is hilarious -- everyone.” He said the daily fantasy concept combines “two things we love, sports and money, and adds a basic accelerant of human emotion, which is greed.” Van Pelt: “Now you have people on Capitol Hill freaking out because they think it is gambling. You have the NCAA, always a bastion of level-headed reasoning, saying if an athlete participates in daily fantasy, they’ll be suspended for the year. They suggest it is gambling because it is.” He continued, “Let me ask you: If you deposit money someplace and you can have more money in that account based on the outcome of points scored in a sporting event, where did you deposit your money? 'A: A daily fantasy site; B: An offshore sportsbook; or C: All of the above?' Well the answer is C, all of the above.” Van Pelt said he is “pro-daily fantasy” because he is an “adult and .. a realist.” But he said, “What I am opposed to is the charade that pretends it is something it’s not. ... Why do you think this frenzy is occurring? Because one form of gambling is now easier to do legally than the other” (“SportsCenter,” ESPN, 9/25).
