THE WALL STREET JOURNAL. Friday, September 13, 2019 |A
Making a Bet
On Sports Fans
Billion Dollar Fantasy
By Albert Chen
(Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 281 pages, $27)BOOKSHELF| By Fred Barnes
T
he battle between FanDuel and DraftKings to dominate
the sports betting market is not a complicated story.
The two startups have done essentially the same
things over the past decade to stay alive, spending hundreds
of millions of dollars on advertising and making deals with
sports leagues: DraftKings with Major League Baseball,
FanDuel with the National Basketball Association. In 2017,
tired of head-to-head competition, they agreed to a merger,
but the Federal Trade Commission blocked it. And now, as
the National Football League season begins, they’re fighting
again, which is what rivals are supposed to do.
There’s a bit more to the story, of course, conveyed with
vividness and reportorial precision by Albert Chen, a Sports
Illustrated writer and editor, in “Billion Dollar Fantasy.” The
two companies, Mr. Chen notes, have given sports fandom a
new, and lucrative, dimension. Instead of betting on an
existing team in almost any sport—hockey’s Pittsburgh
Penguins, for instance—and sticking with it for months, you
draft your own team,
grabbing players from all
over the league. Each
player is assigned a salary,
each team a salary cap. You
assemble a lineup, bet every
day against other fantasy
teams, cash out the next
morning, then start over.
One not-so-small change
occurred last year when the
Supreme Court threw out a
federal law that had banned
commercial sports betting and
said that the states could decide
for themselves whether to allow it.
So far, 16 states have jumped at the
chance. New Jersey permits sports betting over
the phone and, not coincidentally, in May passed Nevada in
gambling revenues.
The most influential people in the world of sports fantasy
are not athletes or team owners but the classic entrepre-
neurs at the center of Mr. Chen’s narrative: the husband-and-
wife team of Nigel and Lesley Eccles (FanDuel) and Jason
Robins (DraftKings). To judge by Mr. Chen’s account, they
possess the passion,single-mindedness and fortitude that
are needed to turn a business idea into real-world success.
Mr. Chen first came across the Eccleses in Las Vegas at
their FanDuel Fantasy Football Championship in December
2014, a contest he was covering for SI. It wasn’t a phone-in
event for $5 bettors. There were 75 qualifiers, “a
testosterone-charged brew of pros, wannabe pros and
amateurs, many of whom, until just a few months ago, were
unaware this world existed,” as Mr. Chen wrote at the time.
The total purse was $10 million.
The SI article made a splash, revealing how far fantasy
sports had come. Mr. Chen is in at least four fantasy leagues
each year. It turns out that the founders of FanDuel—the
Eccleses (with three other investors)—aren’t sports fans.
They’re in zero fantasy leagues. Their interest, at the time of
founding the company, was in startups. Their first idea, Mr.
Chen writes, was “a news prediction site that offered users
virtual cash to wager on outcomes of real-life events.” They
couldn’t come up with a business model for it. A politics-
based game met a similar fate. That left sports.Mr. Eccles grew up on a dairy farm in Northern Ireland
and worked on several failed ventures before spending four
years at McKinsey. He became chief executive of FanDuel.
Lesley Eccles, a mother of three, became chief marketing
officer. She appears to be the tougher of the two. She was
kicked out of a weekly gathering of mothers after winning
too many of the contests they held. “Lesley was always going
to do everything in her power to win,” Mr. Chen writes, “and
it didn’t matter whether it was a weekly scrapbook
competition or a race to become a billion-dollar unicorn.”
Before the 2014 NFL season, Mr. Eccles agreed with an
investor to a $21 million ad buy. Later Ms. Eccles insisted on
$43 million and “not a penny less.” She prevailed. It was a
hinge moment. In a year’s time, Mr. Chen says, “FanDuel
would become the largest advertiser in all of America.”
Jason Robins, the CEO of DraftKings, is closer to what you
might expect from the founder of a sports-related business.
He is a sports nerd. As a teenager in Florida, he played in
more than 100 fantasy leagues at once, Mr. Chen tells us.
Mr. Eccles had a panic attack when he forgot the first name
of the Dallas Cowboys quarterback Dak Prescott during a
TV interview at the New York Stock Exchange. Mr. Robins
doesn’t have to worry about such memory slips. Mr. Chen
says that, at any time, Mr. Robins “could off the top of his
head tell you which [running back] just that morning had
inched closer to the top of a depth chart.”
At a dinner with Mr. Robins in 2015—at a friendly phase
in the companies’ rivalry—Nigel Eccles tried a power move,
testing the classical advice (as Mr. Chen puts it) “to order
the same dish as your dinner guest to gain his trust.” Mr.
Eccles ordered a steak. Mr. Robins ordered a steak too. “As
the waiter collected the menus, Nigel said to the server,
‘Actually, I changed my mind. I’ll have the salad,’ and waited
for Jason’s countermove. Then, Nigel watched as,
coincidence or not, Jason ordered a salad.”
Not that Mr. Robins is shy about taking the initiative. He
started DraftKings in 2012, three years after FanDuel got
under way, aiming to surpass FanDuel by spending millions
on ads and attracting more users. After an ad blitz in 2015,
Mr. Chen calculates, DraftKings “held an edge” over its chief
competitor.
Mr. Robins is going “full throttle,” Mr. Chen says. Mr.
Eccles isn’t. Outside the stock exchange after the TV
interview, he had an epiphany. It was time to walk away.
After the merger with DraftKings was blocked, FanDuel was
acquired by Paddy Power Betfair, one of the U.K.’s biggest
bookmakers. You can bet the rivalry isn’t over.Mr. Barnes is a columnist for the Washington Examiner.Two startups saw an opportunity in the wild
popularity of fantasy leagues and became
ferocious competitors.No Nukes Is Bad News for Climate
T
he Democratic presi-
dential candidates—
possibly excepting Sen.
Cory Booker and Andrew
Yang—aren’t serious about
climate change. That was the
main message of last week’s
CNN “Climate Crisis Town
Hall” telethon, where only
Messrs. Booker and Yang said
they’d consider nuclear
power in a blend of clean en-
ergy sources.
The others either ignored
nuclear power or were down-
right hostile. “We’re not go-
ing to build any nuclear
power plants, and we’re going
to start weaning ourselves off
nuclear energy and replacing
it with renewable fuels,” said
Sen. Elizabeth Warren.
Nuclear is America’s larg-
est source of emission-free
electricity. The candidates are
anxious to stop using fossil
fuels but offer no viable re-
placement. Wind and solar
are intermittent and require
supplemental power, nor-
mally from burning natural
gas, which emits as much as
half the CO2 of coal. Batteries
to store intermittent electric-
ity are too expensive by a
factor of 10.
The million-to-one energy-
density advantage of fission-
ing uranium makes it
cheaper even than coal. New
U.S. ventures are combining
proven technologies—liquid
fuels, high temperature, pas-
sive safety and advancedmanufacturing—to drive to-
tal costs below those of fos-
sil fuels. If they were allowed
to, U.S. companies could
build inexpensive, full-time
power plants emitting no
CO2. They could also export
them to developing nations,
improving their energy-hun-
gry economies.
People are afraid of nu-
clear power, yet it’s provedsafer than other energy
sources, even when disaster
strikes. The United Nations
reported in 2013 that the
2011 Fukushima accident
caused no immediate health
effects and probably will have
no detectable effects. Cancer
rates did not rise notably af-
ter Chernobyl. No one has
been harmed by used fuel.
Modest radiation is safe.
Life evolved at higher radia-
tion levels, and exposures of
40 times background reveal
no harmful health effects.
Physicians have known for
centuries that the dose
makes the poison, yet both
the Environmental Protection
Agency and the Nuclear Reg-
ulatory Commission require
radiation exposures to be “as
low as reasonably achiev-
able.” That makes new plants
cost-prohibitive.
President Trump may not
worry about climate change,
but his EPA is taking an im-
portant step to counter
global warming by reviewing
“the dose response data and
models” of radiation effects
in its Strengthening Trans-parency in Regulatory Sci-
ence effort. The EPA has also
appointed Brant Ulsh to
chair its radiation advisory
committee. Mr. Ulsh is an ex-
perienced health physicist
and well-published critic of
the EPA’s no-safe-threshold
model.
The EPA should continue
this review, then set safe ra-
diation limits based on sci-
ence and observation. The
NRC should revise its regula-
tions accordingly. And all en-
ergy subsidies and prefer-
ences should end. Using
private capital, a competitive
new nuclear industry would
rapidly emerge to compete
with coal and other fossil fu-
els. That would harness capi-
talism to check CO2 emis-
sions, increase U.S. exports,
and help developing nations
prosper. And it would cost
taxpayers nothing.Mr. Hargraves teaches at
Dartmouth’s Osher Lifelong
Learning Institute and is a
co-founder of ThorCon Inter-
national, a nuclear engineer-
ing company.By Robert Hargraves
Most Democrats have
proved themselves to
be unserious about
the environment.OPINION
Coming in BOOKS this weekend
The life & glamour of Susan Sontag • Why we often
‘misread’ others • The man who discovered dark matter •
The mathematics of uncertainty • Duchamp, Dalí & the
coming of surrealism • Sam Sacks on new fiction • & moreFor the past
five years, I
have re-
ceived a
daily email
filled with
stories about those who suc-
cumb to extreme religious
ideologies. Whether it’s the
Nxivm sex-cult trial in New
York earlier this year or the
Netflix documentary series
“Wild Wild Country,” Ameri-
cans have shown an expansive
appetite for cult stories. While
my interest in the topic isn’t
unique, it’s personal: I grew
up in a cult.
In fact, I grew up in the
cult next door. There wasn’t
sexual or physical abuse. We
never lived in a compound. I
didn’t work on a farm in the
woods. Instead my cult vener-
ated one man, who said he
was an apostle receiving di-
rect revelation from God. We
followed the Bible and this
man’s teachings. We gave him
10% of our income—which he
used to buy a Jaguar, snake-
skin boots and a house on the
Rio Grande.
In hindsight, my mother
and I must have been the per-
fect mark. A woman aban-
doned by her husband and left
to raise a socially awkward
child on her own had some
wounds. She was looking for
belonging and acceptance. We
had faith in Jesus but were
never going to be noticed at
the megachurch we attended.
All it took was someone to
I Left the Cult Next Door
make us feel special.
Enter a man with a charm-
ing Caribbean accent. We met
him when we were invited to
his Albuquerque home, when I
was about 7. He invited us to
worship in his living room and
made my mom feel noticed.
His care, instruction and pro-
phetic rhetoric made us feel
important. And after being
deserted by her spouse, my
mother felt seen. Too bad she
was seen by the wrong per-
son. We began to call the man
the Apostle.
In our little group, those
without a spiritual father
were called orphans. After
joining, members were as-
signed a male pastor to meet
with weekly. And then once a
month everyone would gather
together to hear the Apostle’s
divine word. If you were obe-
dient enough, you could be-
come an elder or prophet.
When I was a member, there
were about 20 normal mem-
bers and three elders and
prophets. That was our home
group, but others gathered
throughout the area.
At first the cult simply of-
fered charismatic worship.
But over time it became more.
The Apostle proclaimed God
was sending him updates to
the Bible—often ones that
didn’t make much sense—like
demanding that unmarried
women give their earnings to
their spiritual fathers, who
would in turn give them an al-
lowance. Eventually anyonewho disagreed with anything
was cut out.
We considered mainstream
organized religions faulty and
their adherents misinformed.
Non-Christian religions were
especially dangerous. Eventu-
ally we cut ties with those
who didn’t believe the same
as us, especially if they ar-
gued a lot. If we were toostrong-willed, we were
shamed about our disobedi-
ence and prayed over until the
demons found their way out
through vomit or collapse.
Hardship was a clear sign that
God disapproved of our be-
havior.
The desire to feel wel-
comed and earn approval can
push even the most rational
people to make bad mistakes.
In extreme cases, such people
commit violence in the name
of their cause. Or they liter-
ally drink the Kool-Aid. But in
everyday cults like the one we
belonged to, the mistakes
were small but significant
over time—voluntarily forfeit-
ing our earnings, relationships
and free will.
I started to pull away from
the cult when I went to col-lege in the early 2000s, put-
ting a wedge between my
mother and me. The wedge
grew into a wall over the
years as I became a religion
reporter and refused to dis-
cuss the Apostle and his
teachings with her. My refusal
was followed with a letter
from my mom saying we
could no longer be in relation-
ship because I “continued to
disobey God’s law.” Her note
came with two boxes full of
my childhood belongings.
Cult expert Rick Alan Ross
once told me that he learns
about a new cult in the U.S.
every day. Most of these are
like the cult next door that I
grew up in. They won’t cause
death or sexual abuse on a
massive scale. Rather, these
everyday cults tear already
weak families apart.
The real issue is how many
distressed and lonely people
go without care. People like
my mom, who needed love
and healing, but couldn’t find
it in a church, neighborhood,
family or friend. I don’t know
if there’s a top-down solution
to protect people like her
from cults. But we can all do a
better job noticing each other,
showing empathy, and offer-
ing acceptance to those
around us. You never know
who you might be saving.Ms. Simmons is editor of
the religion news website Spo-
kaneFAVS.com and a lecturer
at the University of Idaho.My mother and I
stopped speaking after
I broke with the man
we called the Apostle.HOUSES OF
WORSHIP
By Tracy
Simmons
Since the
start of the
Trump-Rus-
sia collusion
fantasy, we’ve
seen a pat-
tern: On the
eveofanyre-
port or fact
that might
undermine
that narra-
tive, the forces behind the FBI
investigation leak a “bomb-
shell” claim designed to fur-
ther justify their actions. Bear
this in mind when reading the
new desperate—and highly ir-
responsible—reports about
that supposed “high-value”
Russian spy.
First CNN, and now a vol-
ley of outlets, are claiming
that the U.S. government in
2017 was forced to pull out—
or “exfiltrate”—a supremely
covert Russian source. Ac-
cording to reports, this
source had sent information
to the U.S. for decades, had
risen high in the Russian na-
tional-security infrastruc-
ture, and had access to Rus-
sian President Vladimir
Putin. More notable: All the
stories, to the last, stress
that this source was crucial
to U.S. intelligence officials’
alarm and reaction to Rus-
sian interference in the 2016
election.
A fight has since broken
out over the reason the U.S.
moved to extract the source.
CNN (ludicrously) claims it is
because President Donald
Trump mishandled classified
information. Every other out-
let cites officials noting their
concern that the U.S. media
(in thrall to the collusion
About That Russian ‘Spy’
narrative) might blow the
source’s cover. But this brou-
haha is a side issue to the
vastly more consequential
point: There’s a reason this
story is appearing now, and
therefore a reason to doubt
its full accuracy.
At the beginning of 2018,
as Republicans prepared to
expose the degree to which
the Clinton-funded Steele
dossier had informed the
FBI’s Trump counterintelli-
gence investigation, the leak-
ers suddenly put out a new
claim: It wasn’t the dossier
that mattered but a curious
episode involving a third-tier
Trump aide named George
Papadopoulos. When, in the
spring of 2018, conservative
media discovered that the
FBI had employed a spy
against the Trump campaign,
the leakers got out ahead.
The ensuing stories blew the
identity of the (ahem) “infor-
mant,” and cast the spying in
the most positive, patriotic
light.
And hey, ho, here we are
on the eve of a Justice De-
partment inspector general’s
report that may well render a
dim view of the FBI’s decision
to obtain surveillance war-
rants against U.S. citizens
based on opposition research
from the rival political cam-
paign. And suddenly, the very
same reporters and media
outlets that brought us those
collusion doozies are report-
ing (based, again, on anony-
mous “former” officials) that
actually the U.S. intelligence
community had far more than
just a dossier! It had a super-
secret Russian spy! Of course
it knew what it was doing!Even aside from the tim-
ing, there are reasons to be
skeptical of these reports.
Don’t forget, any number of
Republicans were wary of
Mr. Putin well before 2016,
and were dogging CIA direc-
tor John Brennan for details
of the autocrat’s intentions.
Congressional Republicans
tell me they’ve never seen
any intelligence product that
suggests U.S. officials re-
ceived regular reports from a
highly placed Russian source
on the subjects at issue.Nothing in this story adds
up or speaks well of U.S. in-
telligence agencies. Presum-
ably, any high-ranking
source would have been able
to disavow what we now
know are the dossier’s false
claims of a sprawling Krem-
lin-Trump plot that involved
Mr. Putin, Paul Manafort,
Carter Page, Michael Cohen,
the Rosneft oil company and
many Russian government
officials and oligarchs. Yet
the FBI proceeded as if the
dossier were true. Either the
superspy missed the obvi-
ous, or the superspy wasn’t
that high-up, or U.S. intelli-
gence didn’t think much of
what the superspy had to
say.
It’s possible the reports
contain an element of
truth—potentially blown upto provide cover for the
rogue counterintelligence
investigation into the
Trump campaign. I have no
direct reporting on the
source. Yet the cynical deci-
sion to leak this information
has already had grave con-
sequences. Within a day, re-
porters were outside the
D.C. home of a man assumed
to be the source—in posses-
sion of his name, history
and background. Western
sources whose covers are
blown go on to write books.
Russian sources who defect
or who are exposed as spies
end up poisoned or dead.
This is among the most
egregious leaks in modern
history.
Which means the CIA and
the Justice Department have
an obligation. First, to set
the record straight about
this source—to the extent
they can. Second, to make
clear that they are prioritiz-
ing a leak investigation—to
track down, charge and send
to jail those who helped to
expose (in their own words)
a vital Russian asset. Espe-
cially because this leak
wasn’t done with any useful
purpose. It was done with
the craven and cowardly
goal of shifting a political
narrative.
We keep hearing from the
supporters of former FBI Di-
rector Jim Comey and Mr.
Brennan about their sup-
posed nobility and high-
mindedness. They say their
only interest is in safeguard-
ing the country. Maybe at
some point they could act
like they mean it.
Write to [email protected].These stories always
seem to leak at the
most convenient
times—for the FBI.POTOMAC
WATCH
By Kimberley
A. Strassel