Baker: Fantasy sports rules 'exactly on the mark'
The governor and attorney general may disagree about whether daily fantasy sports betting constitutes gambling, but Gov. Charlie Baker on Monday said Attorney General Maura Healey's proposed regulation of the fantasy sports market is "exactly on the mark."
While the governor was vacationing in Florida last week, Healey rolled out proposed regulations that would prohibit anyone under 21 from wagering on fantasy sports sites like Boston-based DraftKings. The attorney general also wants to prohibit professional athletes and agents from entering fantasy sports contests in their own sports, and would ban company employees from playing at all.
"I think a lot of what's in her proposal is exactly on the mark and I look forward to the comments that she's going to get over the course of the next 60 days or so, but I'm very sympathetic to a lot of what she's proposing," Baker told reporters after a bill-signing ceremony in his office, saying that he spoke with Healey briefly on Monday about her proposal.
Additional regulations would require that advertisements include information on available assistance for problem gamblers and disclose the average net winnings of all players, not just the average winnings of players who win.
Asked if he might want to add anything to her package, Baker said, "I think she covered the bases in a pretty significant and appropriate way."
Baker, who has tried playing on DraftKings, and Healey, who has not played, have come down on opposite sides of the question about whether wagering on fantasy sports amounts to gambling in the traditional sense of it being a game of chance versus skill.
Senate President Stanley Rosenberg, another amateur when it comes to playing daily fantasy sports, has said he believes the activity should not only be regulated, but taxed as well. Healey's regulations did not address taxes and lawmakers to date have not offered any fantasy sports tax proposals.
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