John Oliver HBO/Screenshot
"It’s the same as seasonal fantasy the way a nice mug of tea is the same as a nice baggy of heroin: both give you a lovely warm feeling, one is a little more intense."
John Oliver has had it with all those TV ads for daily fantasy sports sites DraftKings and FanDuel.
"With daily fantasy, you can go online and typically pay an entry fee of anything from 25 cents to thousands of dollars, pick a team for a week or just a day and compete against total strangers," Oliver explained during Sunday's episode. "It’s the same as seasonal fantasy the way a nice mug of tea is the same as a nice baggy of heroin: both give you a lovely warm feeling, one is a little more intense."
Further, these "entertainment product" companies are counting the television networks and sports leagues as investors, though sports gambling is illegal in most states -- and New York hopes to take action, despite its small, outdated exception to the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act of 2006.
Since fantasy sports has evolved from casual office competitions to deceiving "games of skill" won by only a small amount of users, Oliver aimed to explain and expose these sites for what they are -- and recruited Seth Rogen, Mike Birbiglia, Jerrod Carmichael, Kathryn Hahn and Martin Starr to hilariously help him do so.
Watch the segment below.
