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Monday, February 8, 2016

Few Complain To FCC About Daily Fantasy Sports Ads

Despite the social media outrage over what some television viewers said was an excessive, even obnoxious, barrage of ads for daily fantasy sites, the actual government regulators who oversee such content received just about a dozen complaints during the height of the ads last fall.

According to ESPN, the 15 complaints, provided in response to a Freedom of Information Act request submitted by Outside the Lines, cited viewers' displeasure with the content of the ads, as well as issues with the contests themselves.

They include complaints received from August through Nov. 24, 2015. During that time, DraftKings and FanDuel ran a combined 60,000 advertising spots across more than 60 networks, according to iSpot.tv.

The Federal Communications Commission regulates broadcast content on network and cable television programming and allows viewers to submit complaints via mail and online. It has specific rules for advertisements for gaming and lotteries that relate to state laws on gambling. To date, the FCC hasn't taken any action against either daily fantasy company and has not taken a position on whether they violate any gambling advertising rules.

While daily fantasy companies have insisted they are not gambling, that designation is being tested legally in a number of states, and some have outright banned it.


To give some idea of the volume of complaints the FCC usually receives, more than 200 letters came in after NBC's broadcast of the 2012 Super Bowl XLVI halftime show that featured rapper M.I.A., who at one point was seen giving the middle finger to the camera.