Ethan Haskell, a DraftKings employee<\/a>, won $350,000 on rival site FanDuel in October of 2015. Haskell was accused of using confidential knowledge to select his roster with the best players, ones who coincidentally weren’t being heavily selected by competitors.<\/p>\n<\/div>\nHe was eventually cleared of any wrongdoing, but the controversy brought DFS to the forefront of gaming regulators and Empire State politicians.<\/p>\n
Numerous other states quickly acted and mandated that employees of DFS companies could not participate in the contests. And DraftKings and FanDuel released new governing rules to prevent their work force from playing fantasy sports online.<\/p>\n
In the New York DFS law, a “prohibited player” includes “any spouse, child, brother, sister or parent residing as a member of the same household in the principal place of abode of any member, officer, employee or agent of an operator.”<\/p>\n
Zeidenfeld lives in Los Angeles, and therefore isn’t bound to the New York law. California considered DFS legislation in 2016, but no bill was passed.<\/p>\n
Defensive Tackle<\/h2>\n Still, Zeidenfeld’s big score has put DraftKings on the defensive.<\/p>\n
In a statement to sports news site\u00a0Deadspin<\/em>, DraftKings explained, “Al Zeidenfeld is an expert DFS player who is an independent contractor and brand ambassador, he shares his tips and expertise with the DFS player community. He is not a DraftKings employee, and does not have access to contest data or any other non-public company information.”<\/p>\nIt’s worth noting that Zeidenfeld didn’t just play one $20 entry and win a million bucks. In fact, Zeidenfeld played the maximum 150 entries, with his total cost coming in at $3,000.<\/p>\n
But turning $3,000 into $1 million is an investment return of over\u00a033,000 percent. Not bad for a Sunday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
DraftKings sponsored pro Al Zeidenfeld won the week two NFL “Millionaire Maker” contest on the DFS site last Sunday, and the win is creating a new pool of daily fantasy sports (DFS) skeptics. The $20 contest entry attracted 277,286 teams, for a prize of over $5.5 million. Zeidenfeld took the top spot by scoring 221.32 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":42,"featured_media":39893,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[62,10,19,16],"tags":[],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n
DFS Million Dollar DraftKings Winner Takes Some Heat<\/title>\n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n\t \n\t \n\t \n \n \n \n \n \n\t \n\t \n\t \n