Camden: Fantasy sports aren’t gambling? Wanna wager on that?

They’d each put $10 or $50 or $100 or some other mutually agreeable sum into the pot, monitor the statistics, and months later, at the end of the season, somebody would collect the money based on their “team” having the best overall statistics. Now they can do it on a daily basis.

It is losers who fuel companies like FanDuel and DraftKings, no matter what the commercials might lead you to believe. They take more money from losers than they pay out to winners, or else they couldn’t be crowding into commercial time previously occupied by Clydesdales and hot mommas hawking Viagra.

This leads to a question a legislative panel will explore on Friday: Do the losers lose because they have less skill than winners, or is it just luck? If the former, fantasy sports are games of skill. If the latter, they are games of chance, which is to say, gambling.

Under current state law, any fantasy sports competition involving money is gambling, and thus illegal. The Senate Commerce and Labor Committee will explore whether they should be, with the hope of coming up with some legislation for next year’s session.

Sen. Mike Baumgartner, R-Spokane and chairman of the committee, said he’s not sure of the answer but thinks there are at least three options to consider. One is that they are illegal, and should remain so. That means people with the old-style fantasy leagues between friends are breaking the law, as are people plunking down money for the office NCAA Basketball Tournament pool. Having a law that is routinely flouted may be bad policy.

A change to state law?

Another option is that state law should be changed to allow small-scale fantasy wagering between friends and family.

The third would be to determine this is skill, not chance, and change the law to open up online fantasy gaming to Washington residents. When opening an account on one of these websites, prospects must sign an affidavit saying they are not residents of Washington or six other states that consider this illegal gambling.

The state seems in a weak position to look askance at gambling. It allows horse racing and cardrooms, and negotiates pacts with tribes that operate full-scale casinos inside state boundaries. It runs a lottery, which is like the old mob-backed numbers game with a bigger public relations budget.

“I don’t think the state should be on its high horse,” Baumgartner said. “The lottery tends to be a pretty bad deal for the poor.”

But it must also worry about a “camel’s nose in the tent” concern if it greenlights online fantasy gaming. The online poker players will be asking to ante up and have the state let them in, too.

And if you think fantasy sports players can be obnoxious about how much their success is due to skill, you need only listen to a devotee of Texas Hold ’em when they’re winning. Of course, when they’re losing, it’s chalked up to something else.