Fantasy Games Face Legal Reality

RotoPlay Inc., a Pennsylvania based games company, has filed a lawsuit against its competitor, the British listed gambling operator Sportingbet plc.

The press release reporting the case stated alleged copyright infringement and unfair competition with connection to several of RotoPlay's unique games, "Football Lottery" and "Baseball Lottery."

RotoPlay allege that Sportingbet have copied these games and displayed them on their website as their own original games. The games involve participants picking their fantasy team of six athletes from a list of 54. Points are accumulated on the real performance of those athletes in their respected real-life teams that week.

"Sportingbet copied all of our lottery games, unique scoring system, game rules, HTML code and tie-breaker information verbatim," said President of RotoPlay.

"It's very shocking and disappointing to see a billion dollar, publicly traded company such as Sportingbet, so blatantly and willfully steal our games. What is most puzzling to us is that Sportingbet decided to steal the games even after talking with us for months about licensing our games and using them legally."

The fantasy sports industry has approximately 16 million players and brings in more than $1.5 billion per year in North America. The industry is growing at a rate of 7-10 percent annually. There is definitely beef to quarrel over in this case.