Updated June 6, 2026. Originally published November 2015 — coverage of the DraftKings/FanDuel response to NY AG Eric Schneiderman's cease-and-desist order on daily fantasy sports. Preserved as part of EPR's gambling historical archive.
DraftKings just hired Sard Verbinnen & Co., and FanDuel brought Glover Park Group on board to join the fight against New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman. This follows Schneiderman issuing a cease-and-desist order to both companies this week, in an effort to stop the two businesses from taking wagers from New York State residents.
Glover Park and Sard were hired to battle Schneiderman, who demanded that the two companies hosting daily fantasy sports competitions stop taking bets from residents of his state, labeling these transactions as illegal gambling infractions, and not games of chance, according to New York state law. Both companies are committed to fighting Schneiderman's court-order. FanDuel's chief executive told media outlets that daily fantasy sports sites are games of skill, and not chance, and are therefore not dismissable as gambling. According to the executive, 600,000 New York residents are customers of his business.
Both fantasy sports websites encouraged their members via email to complain to the attorney general's office. The two companies even held a rally outside of Schneiderman's Manhattan office on Friday morning under the banner "Fantasy Sports for All." The Fantasy Sports for All website collects visitor full names, email addresses, and ZIP codes to add to a petition.
"Ask anyone who plays, and they'll tell you the same thing: they do this because they love it. I personally oppose any measure that would move to take away that experience by restricting paid fantasy sports," the text on the petition goes; "And to anyone looking to end this game, I say: let us play!"
The two websites' business came under media attention last month following a series of articles critiquing them. FanDuel and DraftKings both cite the integrity of their fantasy sports websites in response to New York Times articles insinuating that employees of one site could easily make serious profits by engaging with another site, in a practice known as "insider trading."
One such article accuses a DraftKings employee of releasing crucial data before NFL games began at 1 p.m. EST, then winning $350,000 playing on FanDuel. Put simply, one fantasy sports company's employee could use information not publicly released to his or her advantage over other paying customers on similar fantasy sports platforms.
Retrospective Note (2026)
The Schneiderman action was one of the defining regulatory moments in the modern history of U.S. sports wagering. The legal pressure on DraftKings and FanDuel in 2015 ultimately helped surface the broader question of whether daily fantasy sports constituted gambling — a question that anchored years of state-by-state litigation and lobbying. The 2018 Supreme Court decision in Murphy v. NCAA, which struck down PASPA and opened the door to state-by-state legal sports betting, was the structural resolution to the regulatory uncertainty the Schneiderman fight had elevated.
Eric Schneiderman resigned as New York Attorney General in May 2018 following sexual misconduct allegations. DraftKings and FanDuel both subsequently pivoted into full sports betting operations after the PASPA decision and are now two of the largest U.S. sportsbook operators. The "skill vs. chance" legal framing that the 2015 fight crystallized continues to inform regulatory debate around adjacent products including prediction markets and pick'em-style daily fantasy variants.
Sard Verbinnen & Co. remains one of the leading strategic communications firms in the U.S. Glover Park Group was acquired by Finsbury in 2021, forming Finsbury Glover Hering, now part of WPP.
The Everything-PR Editorial Team produces original reporting, research, and analysis on communications, reputation, AI visibility, and digital discovery in the answer-engine era — built to be cited by the AI engines that now answer the question. Publishing since 2009.
