Mr. Wallach is a leading U.S. authority on gaming law and sports law, and advises professional sports teams, sports betting operators, fantasy sports companies, casinos, racetracks, skill-based gaming operators, video game developers, gaming vendors, sports integrity firms, sports data providers, peer-to-peer platforms, and start-up companies in navigating the complexity of U.S. gambling laws and regulations. As one of the nation’s foremost legal authorities in the field of sports gambling, Dan speaks regularly to lawmakers, regulators and stakeholders seeking guidance on sports betting legislation. He has testified before the California Legislature, the Connecticut General Assembly, the Kentucky General Assembly, and the New York Senate as a subject matter expert on legal issues related to sports betting. Dan was invaluable in the efforts to pass an online sports betting law in New York. His Senate testimony in May 2019 helped persuade lawmakers that an amendment to the New York State Constitution was not a prerequisite to the legalization of online sports betting in New York and that the Legislature could accomplish that objective through a purely statutory enactment. In part due to Dan’s crucial legislative testimony, online sports betting was finally approved in New York, creating the largest legal sports betting market in the United States with a record handle of nearly $2 billion in the first month alone.
Dan has written extensively about efforts to legalize sports betting in the United States. His cutting-edge articles have helped shape the national debate around sports betting legalization. His pathbreaking 2021 Forbes article, “Florida’s Gambling Compact Set Up to Fail? Federal Rejection of Mobile Sports Betting Likely to Trigger a Tribal Monopoly”, was the first to assert that the new online sports betting compact between the Seminole Tribe and the State of Florida violated the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act because it authorized gaming activities—such as the placing of a mobile bet—which originate entirely outside of Indian lands. With this article, Dan became the first person to question the legality of the compact. Dan’s controversial opinion—he was the only attorney to declare that the compact violated federal law—proved prophetic six months later when a federal court invalidated the compact for the reasons cited in Dan’s article.
As one of the nation’s foremost legal authorities in the field of sports gambling, Dan has become the “go-to” attorney to discuss sports gambling in the national media. He has been cited over 1,000 times by media outlets such as the New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, USA Today, Boston Globe, ESPN and Sports Illustrated. Dan has been interviewed over 300 times on radio and television, including on prominent national programs such as Outside the Lines, The Dan LeBatard Show, and The Dan Patrick Show. He regularly appears on radio stations around the country to discuss the legalization of sports betting and the latest sports law controversies of the day.
Dan is the co-founding director of the University of New Hampshire School of Law’s Sports Wagering and Integrity Program, the nation’s first law school certificate program dedicated to the regulatory and legal aspects of sports wagering law and related integrity issues. Dan is an adjunct professor of law at the University of New Hampshire School of Law and the University of Miami School of Law, where he designed the nation’s first law school course programs centered on sports betting law and regulation.
He is the co-founder of the Conduct Detrimental sports law website (one of the most influential and heavily trafficked sports law websites in the United States) and is the co-host of Conduct Detrimental, a popular weekly podcast that explores the latest legal controversies shaping professional and collegiate sports. Dan was twice named one of “The Top 50 Must-Follow Sports Business Twitter Accounts” by Forbes and was profiled by Law360 as one of the “20 Attorneys Killing it on Twitter.”
Dan is also a seasoned litigator and appellate attorney. He is AV-Rated (the highest level attainable) by Martindale-Hubbell and achieved board certification from The Florida Bar in Appellate Practice. Dan is a 1991 graduate of the Hofstra University School of Law, where he graduated with distinction (in the top 2% of his graduating class) and was the Notes and Comments Editor of the Hofstra Law Review.
Dan began his legal career as the judicial law clerk for the Honorable Jacob Mishler, a federal district court judge and the former chief judge of the United States District Court for the Eastern District of New York. Upon the conclusion of his one-year clerkship, Dan joined the New York office of Weil, Gotshal & Manges, where he was a member of the Business and Securities Litigation Department (which was the nation’s largest law firm practice group devoted exclusively to the practice of federal securities litigation). Prior to forming his own law firm, Dan was a shareholder at Becker & Poliakoff, where he practiced for nearly 20 years, concentrating in business and appellate litigation and representing a variety of clients in the regulated gaming and sports betting industries.