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N.Y. Attorney General Wants DraftKings To Reimburse N.Y. Customers

New York State Attorney General Eric Schneiderman (Hans Pennink/AP)
New York State Attorney General Eric Schneiderman (Hans Pennink/AP)

New York’s state attorney general is trying to ratchet up the pressure on the Boston-based daily fantasy sports website DraftKings.

Attorney General Eric Schneiderman has revised his previous lawsuit to not only force DraftKings and its chief competitor FanDuel to stop doing business in New York, but potentially to put them out of business.

The attorney general is asking a New York court to force the sites to return money spent by their customers in that state.

DraftKings and FanDuel took in about $200 million in entry fees last year from about 600,000 New Yorkers.

The revised complaint also seeks to force the companies to pay civil fines of up to $5,000 per case.

In a statement Friday, a lawyer for DraftKings, David Boies, said the revised complaint shows that the attorney general fundamentally does not understand that daily fantasy sports is a game of skill.

"Originally, the NYAG claimed that daily fantasy sports were illegal gambling because they were games of chance," Boies said in the statement. "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."

In his revised complaint, Attorney General Schneiderman argued DraftKings is running gambling operations and "maintains a computer system recording hundreds of thousands of illegal wagers."

Headshot of Curt Nickisch

Curt Nickisch Business & Technology Reporter
Curt Nickisch was formerly WBUR's business and technology reporter.

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