West Virginia (dis)approves FanDuel US election betting

fanduel-west-virginia-2020-presidential-election-betting

fanduel-west-virginia-2020-presidential-election-bettingUPDATE: FanDuel issued the following statement regarding the betting markets’ disappearance: “While the markets were approved, the West Virginia Lottery has asked FanDuel to refrain from offering the markets until they have time to fully work through the implications of this new market offering.” The original article appears below.

Election betting is finally coming to US-licensed sportsbooks after FanDuel received permission to add election props to its West Virginia offering, although the company may have proved too eager to put their new baby on display.

On Tuesday, FanDuel’s West Virginia-licensed betting app added a number of 2020 US presidential election markets, including the name of the winning candidate, with incumbent Donald Trump currently the favorite at -110 and presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden at +125.

Other markets currently on offer include whether Biden will seal the deal for the Democratic nomination, who will be the Democratic VP candidate and which party will win the election. However, the odds disappeared from FanDuel’s app almost as quickly as they appeared, suggesting someone may have jumped the gun.

Before those odds disappeared, FanDuel issued a statement saying it was proud to have partnered with the West Virginia Lottery, which regulates gambling activity in the state, “to bring these markets into a legal, regulated sportsbook.”

Some question remains as to the legality of election wagering in the state, which has a passage in its legal code making it a misdemeanor to wager anything of value on “any election held in this state.”

It remains to be seen if the federal government will weigh in on the subject, because after all, it’s hard enough disenfranchising people of color without having to compare the final results with what the smart money folks were expecting. But we digress…

Some Nevada legislators have made multiple runs at convincing their state to allow election betting at local sportsbooks, all without success. The US Commodity Futures Trading Commission has also previously rejected attempts to set up a political futures market.

The concept of political betting has proven far less controversial in other jurisdictions, particularly in the UK, where bookies have done major business on everything from US elections to UK referendums. Even Canada’s meek provincial gambling monopolies have offered election wagering for years now, with the 2016 US election proving more popular than that year’s Super Bowl at BC’s PlayNow.com.

Last September, FanDuel CEO Matt King said he’d “love to offer politics,” in part because those markets are essentially “games that everybody loves to play.” King also noted that FanDuel’s parent company Flutter Entertainment does a significant political betting business on its Betfair exchange, while FanDuel itself sprang from an early attempt at a political prediction market.

It’s unclear how much the West Virginia Lottery’s decision to allow political betting was influenced by the current dearth of traditional sports events on which to wager following the mass cancellation of league play due to the COVID-19 pandemic.