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Senate Co-Sponsorship Memoranda
Senate of Pennsylvania
Session of 2025 - 2026
Regular Session
MEMORANDUM
| Posted: | December 5, 2024 10:34 AM |
|---|---|
| From: | Senator Chris Gebhard |
| To: | All Senate members |
| Subject: | Daily Online Fantasy Sports Contests in Pennsylvania |
| In Act 42 of 2017, Pennsylvania legalized fantasy sports contests in the Commonwealth. In the eight years since there has been numerous innovations in fantasy sports games and unfortunately, Pennsylvania’s law has not kept up with these changes. Unlike the fantasy sports contests that were on the market in 2017, some of these innovative games do not use traditional fantasy scoring to determine winners. Rather, some allow participants to build lineups of players across different sports. Another popular scenario allows participants to pick any players they would like on their team without going through draft or salary limitations. All these methods are indeed still skill based and require participants to create virtual teams of multiple real players from real-world sports teams. Currently 23 states allow for daily fantasy sports contests and most of them allow of some of these new innovative ways to create a lineup. Since Pennsylvania’s fantasy sports law has not been updated since 2017, it’s unclear if these newer types of fantasy sports style contests are allowed in the Commonwealth. Soon, I will be introducing legislation that will amend Pennsylvania’s fantasy sports law to specifically allow the fantasy sports category to stay updated on the latest innovations. Please join me in co-sponsoring this important update to Act 42 of 2017. |