Feeling A Draft

The headline asked if "Draft Kings and Fan Duel are even worth the money?" If you're not familiar with these entities, you probably don't have a television set. Or eyes. These fantasy football outlets have taken out ads on most every major TV network, cable outlet, and public access channel available. And if you don't see a lot of print ads in those magazines you're reading, grandma and grandpa, that's because we don't read newspapers and magazines anymore. We have Al Gore's Internet, and if Tipper's husband didn't have fantasy sports in mind when he came up with this series of tubes, then he really missed the proverbial boat. Just stick your credit card in that seldom-used floppy disk slot and ring up one of these web sites to see what all the fuss is about.
On second thought: don't. Instead, let's take a look at some of the math involved. Both of these firms will tell you success stories of how they will take tiny amounts of money, like two or three hundred dollars, and turn them magically into millions. If that kind of return on your money sounds too good to be true, then you're probably not familiar with Ponzi schemes, Amway, and legalized gambling.  Wasn't Ponzi Richie Cunningham's hoodlum friend? Legalized gambling? Could you build a pyramid with used Amway cartons? If you are familiar with any of this, I am guessing that you probably haven't spent dollar one on Fan Duel or Draft Kings because you understand that any business that can spend the kind of money these two shell out for their advertising. Did I say "shell game?" That's the kind of thing that gets billboards put up at each and every BART stop, and not just one or two, but in every available location. On the stairways, outside the trains, inside the trains, tattooed on the foreheads of the homeless guys sleeping on the steps. These ads insist that they have only your best interest in mind. They want to give you money. What they aren't telling you is that the only way that they can give you money is if it is someone else's money. And if they've got the kind of money to spend wallpapering public transit stops in the Bay Area, they can probably hand out a few oversized checks to a small percentage of the herds of anxious shills who line up each and every week to hand over their little checks in hopes of turning them into something bigger.
In the next few years, one of these companies will grow to take over the thirty-two billion dollars in entry fees that somebody is willing to fork over week after week. That translates into more than two and a half billion dollars in net, once the big checks and the billboards are printed. You might want to place your bets now. Sounds like a sure thing.