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Dana Young files ‘fantasy contests’ bill

in Statewide/Top Headlines by

Sen. Dana Young has again filed a bill to exempt fantasy sports play from regulation under the state’s gambling laws.

Young, a Tampa Republican, filed her measure (SB 374) Friday afternoon. She introduced similar legislation this past session.

The bill for the 2018 Legislative Session would prohibit a fantasy contest operator from offering “contests based on the performances of participants in collegiate, high school, or youth athletics.”

That was a concern of the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA), she said in a phone interview: “I thought it appropriate that it be in there, so we added it.”

Otherwise, Young said her language came from last session’s conference committee on a proposed omnibus gambling bill that failed by that session’s end.

A House bill last session also would have excepted fantasy contests from regulation as gambling. Around 3 million Floridians say they play some sort of fantasy sports.

In sum, “we’re just confirming that fantasy sports are not illegal,” she said. 

Session begins Jan. 8.

Before joining Florida Politics, journalist and attorney James Rosica was state government reporter for The Tampa Tribune. He attended journalism school in Washington, D.C., working at dailies and weekly papers in Philadelphia after graduation. Rosica joined the Tallahassee Democrat in 1997, later moving to the courts beat, where he reported on the 2000 presidential recount. In 2005, Rosica left journalism to attend law school in Philadelphia, afterwards working part time for a public-interest law firm. Returning to writing, he covered three legislative sessions in Tallahassee for The Associated Press, before joining the Tribune’s re-opened Tallahassee bureau in 2013. He can be reached at [email protected]

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