Yahoo granted UK licence to offer DFS contests

Yahoo has been granted a gambling licence by the UK Gambling Commission to offer its daily fantasy sports (DFS) contests to players in the country.

The operator’s DFS site offers contests in a variety of sports, including football, NFL and the NBA.

UK players are able to access all the same tournaments as their counterparts across the pond, with liquidity shared across the UK, USA and Canada.

The limited fanfare accompanying the granting of the licence mirrors the responses of FanDuel and DraftKings, both of which launched in the UK earlier in 2016.

Both DraftKings and FanDuel, the largest operators in the DFS space, look to distance themselves from gambling, given the implications such links may have in ongoing legal wranglings to see the activity regulated in certain US states.

While some US states have no regulations governing DFS contests, in the UK the landscape is far less murky, with all operators requiring a “pool betting” licence.

DraftKings and FanDuel recently announced their agreement to merge, with the pair expected to formally become one entity in the second half of 2016.