Daily Fantasy Sports Will be Shut Down by Yahoo in New York

It is official now. Yahoo has decided to close down offering paid Daily Fantasy Sports contests from today in New York. Supposedly, Yahoo is following DraftKings and FanDuel by stopping the event in New York. But, the company did not stop here. It has taken a new venture in hand.

Yahoo has issued a press release detailing its new initiative, Fair Play. It is a set of guidelines that will supposedly level the playing field. It will be like designating veteran players from the rest of the community with a special badge indicating who has entered over 1,000 contests in a year or those who have come out on top 65 percent of the time in as few as 250 contests.

Like DraftKings and FanDuel, Yahoo stopping sports in the city will be a good decision or not — you will figure this out later. In the case of the above-mentioned sites, and not Yahoo, the state’s Attorney General has reached agreements with both daily fantasy sports sites that will have them shut down paid contests in New York from March 21st until at least September. You can still use them as a New Yorker if you are out of state, but you are otherwise out of luck.

In the case of Yahoo, it will place some limits on how many entries a given person can take into a single contest and in no event can a single user’s entries make up more than one percent of total entries in a contest. Also, any sort of bots or scripting tools for uploading or editing your entries are strictly not allowed as well.

It is us who will figure out later whether Fair Play is more effective for New York and is for the millions of fans who want a more trustworthy experience. Up until now, Yahoo will not start its Daily Fantasy Sports contests.