Understanding the Relation Between Social Behaviors and Daily Fantasy Sports Risk Behavior

AbstractIn daily fantasy sports (DFS) contests, participants form a roster of athletes scheduled to perform in a pre-determined list of sporting contests or games. Each participant has the opportunity to win cash prizes, depending on the performance of the athletes on their roster and the performances of the athletes on the other participants ’ rosters. Some contests have higher variances than others (i.e., lower percentages of participants winning and higher payouts versus higher percentages of participants winning and lower payouts) and can be considered riskier propositions. DFS operators have mechanisms for interacting with friends on their servers (e.g., referral programs and incentives, friend lists, private contests). To determine whether use of these mechanisms (i.e., social behavior) was associated with preference for higher variance contests (i.e., risk behavior), we analyzed player records (N = 11,130) from a DFS service. We constructed a measure of risk behavior, player risk score, that is based on DFS contests’ entry fees and payout structures. We observed that players referred to the DFS service by a friend and those who had a reciprocal friendship had similar player risk score s. However, those who referred a friend, both generally and among players with reciprocal friendships, were more likely than others to have greater player risk scores, and greater numbers of friend referrals also was associated with higher player risk scores. Although the observed...
Source: Journal of Gambling Studies - Category: Addiction Source Type: research