A South Texas lawmaker vows to make fantasy football legal in Texas once again. State Rep. Richard Raymond aims to reverse the Texas Attorney General’s opinion in 2017.
At the beginning of this year, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton announced that fantasy football sites like Fan Duel and Draft Kings were, in his legal opinion, illegal gambling sites, because the game involved chance and the house always took a cut of the money.
But Laredo Democratic State Rep. Richard Raymond says these games are more about “skill” than they are “chance.”
“I play fantasy football, it is a game of skill, it is not a game of chance. Anybody who knows about football if you put Tom Brady on one side against Blake Bortles from Jacksonville on the other side it is not a game of chance, it is a game of skill," Raymond explains.
Raymond says playing fantasy sports requires the player to have an understanding of the game and a player’s statistics in order to be successful. He says without that essential knowledge of pro-football, you’re not going to win.
He says his legislation would clarify a part of the Texas constitution that Paxton is pointing to.
“It’s just a clarification of the law because I don’t think we need a constitutional amendment and so this would simply clarify that it is a game of skill, not a game of chance," Raymond says.
Raymond says he has not been approached by any professional fantasy football facilitator prior to crafting his legislation.
