DraftKings and FanDuel abandon fantasy sports merger

13 July 2017

Fantasy sports sites DraftKings and FanDuel have abandoned a strategy to merge, less than a month after US competitors regulators sought to block the deal.

The deal would have produced a business with control over 90% of the market for paid, daily dream sports contests, government authorities said.

The firms said the deal would lead to greater investment, providing benefits for consumers.

They said they would now aim to grow independently.

FanDuel began in Scotland in 2009 and is now based in New York. It is number 2 in the US for paid daily dream sports contests behind DraftKings, which started in Boston in 2012.

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The 2 firms specialise in a subset of dream sports, in which fans select players to produce teams for single games, instead of the yohaig code season, with the potential to win cash rewards based on the outcome.

In November, they said they had consented to combine. Terms were not divulged.

At the time, they said the bet9ja's welcome offer would permit them to integrate forces on regulatory problems raised by US regulators, who had compared the industry to illegal gambling and banned the sites in some states.

Nigel Eccles, head of FanDuel, stated it made sense to move forward separately.

"There is still huge, untapped market opportunity for FanDuel, and we will continue to perform our strategy to grow our company and additional broaden the dream sports industry," he stated in a declaration.

Draft Kings president Jason Robbins also said terminating the merger would enable the yohaig code firm to "singularly focus" on development, consisting of internationally.

In 2015 there were an approximated 57 million fantasy sports players in the US alone.