Daily Fantasy Sports, or DFS, is a fast growing niche within the fantasy sports industry. DFS differs from traditional fantasy leagues in that the entire league is played in a single day or up to 1 week.

Traditional fantasy leagues have you draft a team, which you then follow for the entire sports season. With DFS, you draft a team from a pool players playing that day (or week) and compete against others in that short-term contest.

For fantasy basketball, you draft a team for a single day contest, and because of the NBA schedule, you can draft new teams and play in contests almost every day. For fantasy football, you typically draft a team for the week – Thursday to Monday, but there could be other contests with even shorter time frames (ie – only Sunday’s games).

DFS, and traditional fantasy leagues, are considered games of skill and therefore legal. At the federal level, the US government explicitly legalizes fantasy sports under the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act of 2006.

However, there are some individual states that have laws prohibiting playing fantasy sports for real money – Montana, Washington, Louisiana, Arizona, and Iowa. If you reside outside of these states, then playing daily fantasy sports online for real money is completely legal. Click here to read more.

DFS is a new industry which began late in 2007 so it’s important to watch the development of this industry and the new sites entering the niche.