Daily Fantasy Sports: More than a dozen states ban this kind of sports wager — except when they don’t

Labaron Philon Jr. led Alabama in assists in the second round of March Madness earlier this year. Cameron Boozer scored more than a quarter of Duke’s points in the Sweet 16. Alex Karaban spent all but two minutes on the court for the University of Connecticut in the Elite Eight.

Alabama, Duke and UConn won those games. But for sports gamblers who lost money betting on these athletes individually, that didn’t matter.

One Instagram user who bet on Philon’s scoring performance hurled a racial slur at him for not putting up enough points. Another blamed their betting loss on Boozer because he hadn’t hit any three-pointers. One bettor was upset that Karaban hadn’t turned over the ball enough — he bet Karaban would have two turnovers, he said on Karaban’s Instagram.

Harassment like this is among the reasons 15 states with legalized sports gambling ban wagers on individual college athletes.

But a loophole in how fantasy sports are regulated means those restrictions applied to just 38% of opportunities to risk money on individual athletes during the men’s March Madness tournament earlier this year, according to an analysis by the Shirley Povich Center for Sports Journalism and the Howard Center for Investigative Journalism at the University of Maryland.

The loophole means over 120 million Americans who cannot otherwise place sports wagers on individual college athletes could still legally bet on them, including 82 million people living in states where sports betting isn’t legal at all.

This is because the majority of the nearly 21,000 identified opportunities to bet on individual athletes during March Madness were listed on “daily fantasy sports” platforms, which often aren’t regulated as sports betting.

https://marylandmatters.org/2026/10/13/more-than-a-dozen-states-ban-this-kind-of-sports-wager-except-when-they-dont/