There was a time when the state of Iowa was considered as a possible destination for the expansion of the Daily Fantasy Sports (DFS) in the US, especially with Iowa becoming one of the five states in the country which were headed to implementing DFS bills. However, at this point, it seems very unlikely for the DFS industry to set foot in the state.
The current session of the state’s legislature body is soon to come to an end, but at this time, the matters of making daily fantasy sports legal and regulating them is still alive. Back in March, the DFS bill’s major sponsor, Representative Matt Windschitl, shared his optimism about the future of the new piece of legislation, saying in his opinion the bill would be brought to the finish line, especially considering the fact that the industry could be highly profitable there.
However, with the local legislature’s session coming closer to its end, it looks like the DFS bill would be dead for another year. The truth is that there has not been any recent activity on the bill, and considering the short time left until the end of the session, the daily fantasy sports bill would probably not pass.
Currently, daily fantasy sports betting is not allowed across the state of Iowa. The state gambling law has prevented a number of companies focused on providing such services from operating in Iowa. That left some of the biggest players in the DFS betting arena, such as FanDuel, DraftKings, FantasyDraft, Yahoo, etc. out of the state industry for years.
Apart from Iowa, there are four other US states that have never given the green light to daily fantasy sports betting – Louisiana, Washington, Arizona and Montana. The afore-mentioned states have never seriously considered making the DFS legal, apart from the state of Montana, which this year faced DFS push that unfortunately failed. The other three states have also seen various attempts fro introduction of daily fantasy sports legislation over the recent years, but none of them saw success.
Fortunately for the supporters of the daily fantasy sports industry in the US, a number of other states have managed to successfully bring to action DFS laws. So far, a total of eleven states have introduced DFS laws, making the daily fantasy sports betting legal, with nine of them bringing the DFS legislation to action since the beginning of 2016. The year 2017 saw the state of Mississippi updating a 2016 law and making it permanent, as well as the state of Arkansas which enacted a DFS law.
As far as the current state legislatures’ sessions are concerned, with a few of them ending in April, none of them have recognised making DFS betting legal as a paramount goal for the year 2017. Still, there are three big states – Illinois, Texas and Florida – which are still considering the introduction of daily fantasy sports legislation and which are believed to be the ones to finally allow DFS on their territories.
- Author
Daniel Williams
