Two of the most popular gambling sites in the United States — FanDuel and Draft Kings — just lost themselves a major source of both revenue and traffic. On Thursday afternoon, it was announced that the sites would be suspending all of their college sports contests indefinitely, as part of an agreement with the NCAA.
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First reported by ESPN's David Purdam, every single college contest on the sites will end after this week's college basketball games. The NCAA men's basketball tournament, the final college event for daily fantasy before to football season rolls around, concludes with Monday evening's championship game.
"[F]anDuel has had months of productive conversations with the NCAA, their member institutions and various state legislators to better understand their concerns around fantasy sports contests based on amateur athletics," a company spokesperson said in a statement via ESPN.com. "It is clear that this is an issue that matters to a variety of constituencies and we feel that the best path forward is to suspend offering these contests pending resolution on the issue within state legislatures," a FanDuel spokesperson said in a statement to ESPN. DraftKings, in a statement, also acknowledged the productive dialogue with the NCAA and said it feels suspending contests on college sports is the "best path forward for the industry at this time."
NCAA President Mark Emmert also released a statement following FanDuel and Draft Kings' announcement, and added that the action culminates "months of hard work."
https://twitter.com/InsidetheNCAA/status/715606912809705472/photo/1
Given that college sports, including the NCAA Tournament and college football, are huge incentives for fans to bet on teams, this is undoubtedly a huge blow to the site. In January, the site's primary pay provider, Vantiv Entertainment Solutions, announced it would be suspending its payments processing software on Feb. 29.
