Daily Fantasy Sports Giant FanDuel Forms Board of Advisors

A new advisory board has been created for FanDuel, one of the two largest daily fantasy sports companies in the world. The board's express purpose is to help the company develop policy, but it's not hard to see that they're scrambling at this point to get as much positive publicity as possible after the scandals and other hits that the industry has taken in the past couple of months.

Who is on the Board

This board consists of a number of big names in sports and politics. Michael Garcia will be the chairman, and he's known for being the US Attorney for the Southern District of New York, an important position. Former Pennsylvania Governor Tom Ridge, who was also the Secretary of the US Department of Homeland Security, will be on the board as well. We'll see the former president and CEO of the Dallas Mavericks Terdema Ussery, and Tim Brosnan, who used to be the Executive Vice President of Business for Major League Baseball, is also on the board.

Importance of This Advisory Board

This advisory board is important for two reasons. First, it shows that they're taking self-regulation seriously, an issue that will help keep government regulation of the industry from getting out of hand. Second, it offers a pre-emptive solution to any criticism that could come their way that they don't have qualified professionals in place who can help direct policy on complicated matters that affect politics, online gambling and the sports world. Considering the sports world has been rallying against anything resembling sports betting until DFS came along, it's a pretty big deal.

Will DraftKings Follow Suit?

It'll be interesting to see how DraftKings follows suit on this particular issue. Don't be surprised if you see their own advisory board popping up inside of the next couple of weeks. They have been facing a lot of the same problems as FanDuel, and they've responded to many of them in the same ways. Overall, it'll be really telling how they react to this, and it'll also be a major factor in how they are treated with all of the issues going on in the industry today. We hope that this advisory board helps to steer things in the right direction for FanDuel since it's really what's best for the players.