New York Wants DFS Players' Money Back

New York Attorney general Eric Schneiderman has intensified his fight with daily fantasy sports sites DraftKings and FanDuel, and is now seeking restitution of funds the sites made off New York players, as well as punitive fines.

Schneiderman amended his lawsuit against the two companies before New Year’s Day. The suit now wants the sites to give back the money made in the state and pay a fine of up to $5,000 per case. That could result in a huge penalty against the sites, as they took in an estimated $200 million in entry fees in 2015 from at least 600,000 customers in the state, according to ESPN.

The complaint also seeks an “accounting of monies collected from consumers in New York.”

David Boies, lawyer for DraftKings, said in a statement that Schneiderman’s new filing “reveals that the attorney general’s office still does not understand fantasy sports.”

“Like the NYAG original complaint, it is based on the fundamental misunderstanding of fantasy sports competitions,” Boies said. “Originally, the NYAG claimed that daily fantasy sports were illegal gambling because they were games of chance. That was disproven. Now, the NYAG complains that DFS contests are so much contests of skill that some advertising is misleading because, the NYAG says, certain ads imply that DFS contests are games of chance. This claim, too, is baseless.”

Schneiderman sued to shut down the two sites last month and was granted a temporary injunction that would have closed the sites. DraftKings and FanDuel, however, appealed the injunction and received their own temporary injunction that has allowed them to keep operating in the state.