Most Recent Posts

There's big money in fantasy sports. Last year, alone, people paid $1.7 billion to play in fantasy leagues. With all that money sloshing around, a fantasy economy has sprung up, giving rise to real businesses. Here are four of them.

The Insurance Company

Henry Olszewski founded of Fantasy Sports Insurance in 2008 — the year the financial system nearly collapsed. And, more importantly, the year New England Patriots quarterback Tom Brady suffered a serious hit to the knee.

Brady was out for the season. And fantasy-football managers who had drafted Brady were screwed.

"And it kind of just hit me," Olszewski says. "Could this be an opportunity to put together a program to cover fantasy team owners against these type of injuries?"

It could.

Olszewski's business sells insurance — real insurance — to fantasy team owners. Here's how it works. Say you're a fantasy manager and you're paying $100 to participate in a fantasy league. You can buy insurance from Olszewski for $10. Then, if your star player goes down for the season, Olszewski will pay you $100.

This season, he says, the big player fantasy owners are insuring against is Minnesota Vikings Running Back Adrian Peterson.

The Judge

Say it's late in the season. A manager of a team that's not in contention trades a great player in exchange for a weak player. "Everyone raises up their arms and says, 'Wait a minute, that's crazy," says Bill Green, founder and CEO of fantasydispute.com. In extreme cases, fantasy managers accuse each other of cutting side deals that are against the rules.

When this happens, Green will serve as a judge-for-hire: For $14.95 he'll step in and issue a ruling to resolve the dispute.

The Vault

LeagueSafe holds entry fees and manages payouts for fantasy leagues. And while the businesses we described above — the insurance company and the judge — are small, part-time operations, LeagueSafe is a full-blown business.

"We're up to 8 employees, and we've got several hundred thousand people using the product," Paul Charchian, the company's founder, told me.

LeagueSafe doesn't charge a fee — they profit off the float, by investing the money they hold during the season.

Bonus: Carchian is also the the Fantasy Sports Trade Association. Because even fantasy sports companies have their own lobbying group -

The High-Speed League

FanDuel lets fantasy players have more fantasy.

In a typical fantasy league, managers draft teams and wait all season to figure out who won. Fanduel lets players compete against each other every week in football, and every day in other sports.

In 2009, the year the company launched, it paid out $100,000 to people using its service. Last year, they paid out $49 million. This year, they estimate they'll pay $135 million.

Iran's new President Hassan Rouhani has launched a charm offensive ahead of his visit to the U.N. General Assembly in New York next week.

There have been political prisoners released, tweets, letters exchanged with President Obama, a television interview and even an op-ed in The Washington Post.

The activity has raised the possibility of improved relations between the two countries, whose ties have been marked by mutual antipathy and mistrust since the 1979 Islamic revolution.

But as NPR's Greg Myre noted upon Rouhani's election in June, we've heard this story before – several times. Greg wrote:

"Ever since Iran's 1979 Islamic Revolution, the U.S. has been in search of moderate Iranian leaders who could steer the country away from its hostile standoff with America.

"To cite one famous example, President Ronald Reagan's administration secretly sold weapons to Iran in the mid-1980s in the belief it could work with the country's 'moderate' elements even as Iran remained under the control of revolutionary leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini."

An appeals court in Texas has overturned the 2010 conviction of former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, who had been found guilty of illegally funneling corporate money to Texas candidates during the 2002 campaign cycle.

DeLay, a Republican, had been out on bail while appealing his conviction and the three-year prison sentence he was handed afterward.

But in a 2-1 ruling released Thursday, the state's Third District Court of Appeals says "we conclude that the evidence presented does not support a conclusion that DeLay committed the crimes that were charged. ... The fundamental problem with the State's case was its failure to prove proceeds of criminal activity."

The court found that a political action committee DeLay created, which was at the center of the case, could accept donations from corporations and that the PAC "could lawfully transfer the corporate funds out of state." Therefore, the judges write, "the State failed to prove the 'applicable culpable mental states' for the donating corporations to support a finding of criminal intent by the corporations."

What's more, the appeals court says:

"There was no evidence that [the PAC] or RNSEC [the Republican National State Elections Committee] treated the corporate funds as anything but what they were, corporate funds with limited uses under campaign finance law. Rather, when viewed in the light most favorable to the verdict, the evidence showed an agreement to two legal monetary transfers: that [DeLay's PAC] transfer corporate money to RNSEC for use in other states and not in Texas in exchange for RNSEC transferring funds to Texas candidates out of a hard money account."

House Republicans, meet Sen. Ted Cruz. Ted Cruz, House Republicans.

Given the surprise expressed by some House members at the Texas senator's approach to the defunding of Obamacare, perhaps an introduction was in order.

A few dozen House members Wednesday morning successfully coerced a reluctant Speaker John Boehner into tying the Obamacare language to a must-pass government funding bill. This came after weeks of television ads featuring Cruz and fellow Senate Republican Mike Lee advocating exactly that plan, regardless of the consequences.

Yet not long after Boehner's announcement came a statement from Cruz commending House Republicans, but also warning: "Harry Reid will no doubt try to strip the defund language from the continuing resolution, and right now he likely has the votes to do so. At that point, House Republicans must stand firm, hold their ground, and continue to listen to the American people."

Got that? House Republicans did. After imploring them to act, Cruz essentially conceded that he could not realistically accomplish anything in the Senate, and therefore it was all on the House's shoulders. Great work guys! Keep that finger in the dike, and don't let us down!

Reaction from those House Republicans was swift and, well, more than a little bit tart.

Tim Griffin of Arkansas offered this tweet: "so far Sen Rs are good at getting Facebook likes, and townhalls, not much else. Do something." (This was later deleted.)

Georgia Rep. Tom Price had this: "House Republicans are turning words into action to defund #Obamacare. Ball will be in the Senate's court."

Perhaps those in the House had not been paying much attention to Cruz, who came to prominence within weeks of taking office this year by suggesting that Chuck Hagel, then the defense secretary nominee and a former GOP senator himself — might have taken money from the North Koreans.

Not long after, Arizona Sen. John McCain included Cruz among a group in Congress he considered "wacko birds." Since then, Cruz has become better known for his visits to early presidential primary states than for working with fellow senators on legislation.

At a news conference Thursday afternoon, Cruz did thank House Republicans for sticking their necks out, and deflected questions about his statement. "Americans don't care about petty political bickering in Washington," he said.

For his part, Boehner would not specifically address Cruz at his own news conference, but he did say: "It's time for them to pick up the mantle and get the job done."

S.V. Dte is the congressional editor on NPR's Washington Desk.