Major League Baseball plans to return on July 23 with a 60-game mini season that is intended to take place despite the Covid-19 pandemic. For baseball’s team owners, this shortened 2020 season presents an opportunity to maintain the game’s tradition despite legal risks about players potentially catching the coronavirus. Meanwhile, for fantasy sports operators, the return of baseball presents a different set of legal challenges, most pertaining to game rules and contractual relationships.
With the planned restart of baseball in late July, there are a number of issues that lawyers representing fantasy sports operators need to consider. First, fantasy sports operators will need to address how to handle league payouts if Major League Baseball does not complete its 2020 season because of a Covid-19 outbreak among players. This question specifically pertains to whether fantasy sports owners should be paid out as winners based on current fantasy league standings at the time the season is stopped, or whether all entry fees should simply be refunded. (And should it matter if the season is stopped after one week or after many weeks?)
Another legal issue that fantasy sports operators will need to consider is who will bear the financial risk between them and statistical providers if the season is stopped because of Covid-19. Most statistical providers include language in their standard contracts that pertains to seasons that never happen because of a strike or other force of God. But not every contract between a fantasy sports operator and a statistical provider has language that references a season stoppage because of a pandemic.
Finally, the unusual 2020 baseball format leaves questions about whether leagues that drafted prior to the onset of Covid-19 should now redraft. Indeed, not only are some healthy players now injured and some injured players now healthy, but the game rules have also changed since many drafts. For example, Major League Baseball plans in 2020 to employ a universal designated hitter, have more inter-league games, and play no out-of-conference inter-division games. While most fantasy sports participants may be happy just to have the opportunity to partake in their hobby again, owners in high-stakes leagues may argue the changed MLB game rules represent an activity of unforeseeable “chance” in what they expected to be a “game of skill.”
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Marc Edelman ([email protected]) is a Professor of Law at Baruch College’s Zicklin School of Business and the founder of Edelman Law. He is the Indiana Law Journal author of “Regulating Fantasy Sports,” which is cited by the Illinois Supreme Court in Dew-Becker v. Wu. Disclosure: The author provides legal consulting services to SuperDraft, a daily fantasy sports operator briefly referenced in this article.
I am a Professor of Law at the Zicklin School of Business (City University of New York), where I focus on sports, antitrust, gaming, and intellectual property law. I
I am a Professor of Law at the Zicklin School of Business (City University of New York), where I focus on sports, antitrust, gaming, and intellectual property law. I also teach the only course in the country on fantasy sports law and provide legal consulting in the industry.