DraftKings Acquires StarStreet, Playboy to FD
About 1 month after DraftKings acquired DraftStreet, DK continues to make whatever moves it can to be #1 in the Daily Fantasy World. Early this morning it was announced that DraftKings also acquired StarStreet’s assets.
As most of the DFS (Daily Fantasy Sports) community is aware, StarStreet and DraftKings were both based out of Boston, MA. Jeremy Levine, CEO & Founder of StarStreet, has always had a great relationship with DraftKings and their CEO Jason Robins, and told me that he felt extremely comfortable transferring his users’ accounts to DraftKings’ platform. StarStreet has come a long, long way since founding in 2009 as a TechStars funded startup. The most hardcore RotoGrinders members may remember that Jeremy and his co-founder, Nicolo Giorgi, first started StarStreet as a performance-based sports stock market platform before later shifting focus solely to Daily Fantasy. – StarStreet has told me that they are not done with the Daily Fantasy world, but are shifting their focus to a mobile gaming solution for Daily Fantasy sports. We’ll have more details on that product in the future.
Accoring to Paul Liberman, co-founder of DraftKings, StarStreet player accounts will transfer over as of Monday afternoon. If the transfer process is anything similar to the process utilized in the DraftStreet merger, then it will be extremely convenient and quick for users.
$41M in Funding
In addition to this exciting news, DraftKings has raised $41M in funding led by the Raine Group. In addition to The Raine Group, existing investors Redpoint Ventures, GGV Capital, and Atlas Venture all joined in on the Series C round of funding. This brings the grand total to $75M. The battle of fund-raising between FanDuel and DraftKings is reaching epic levels. Per Techcruch DraftKings, hopes to leverage The Raine Group’s connections in the media, entertainment, and gaming worlds to help grow its business. It will use the funding to accelerate customer acquisition through a number of different media channels, including TV, radio, digital, and mobile ahead of the NFL season.
Playboy Mansion Finals Events Acquired by FanDuel
We’ve just been informed that, interestingly enough, DraftKings main competitor, FanDuel, has had StarStreet’s Playboy Mansion contract transferred to them. This live event package was a huge highlight of StarStreet offerings, and allowed finalists to party it up at the Playboy Mansion in L.A., while competing for high stakes cash prizes. It will be exciting to see what FanDuel can do with the contract to these parties, but it looks like we can expect more daily fantasy sports events to be held at Hugh Hefner’s abode.
More Updates Coming
Lastly, stay tuned to this article for more updates as they come in. I’ll be in touch with the DraftKings co-founders as RotoGrinders is currently in Atlantis covering the DK World Baseball Championships. $1,000,000 will be awarded to 1st place. You can follow live coverage of the DK event here
Comments
Bleak day as a high juice sight absorbs another lower juice site…DK has to move to 11 for 9 action for mid-cost contests to get my buy-in in a big way….
Thanks For The Info Cam,Great keeping the DFS Community on Top Of Things. Good Luck in your DFS Play.
when there is no competition left you have what is known as a Monopoly and that is not good for consumers ,am excited to see the growth of DFS but big time worried there is no regulations or watchdog and soon to be less and less options available for people that enjoy Daily Fantasy Sports
Agreed. Competition is what leads to growth and a better product. When companies buy out each other it only leads to expansion to that company, not the industry as a whole. Good move for draftkings, bad move for the industry in my opinion. With fanduel sitting quietly I do expect something from their end to level the field with draftkings making 2 big mergers.
Holy shtt I like SS. This is a dark day. Explains why site down today tho.
Fanduel doesn’t have to do anything if they don’t want to. They control over 60% of the market share so they just need to focus on quality of service towards consumers. Still will be interesting to see how these two mergers will effect the upcoming football season.
This.
SS’s overlay was one of the best kept industry secrets.
rip SS an DS
2011 FFFC Finalist
2011 FanDuel WFFC Finalist
2014 StarStreet MLB Playboy Mansion Finalist
Just came back from the playboy mansion and it was pretty epic. This is sad – I understand SS wanting to sell and get a major payday – but I am less than excited about the prospect of having to play on sites with 10K entrants per contest…
I loved playing on StarStreet and
don’t like the move at all.
Hope my money gets transferred over today so I can take it out. My daily fantasy days are numbered.
do i lose my affiliate money? I had some people on starstreet and if they don’t have draftkings accounts, do i still get paid?
RG Season Long Champion: NBA
There is another recent thread where FatalError points out that DK can’t create a contest for everyone… but I’m sure they have by far the biggest variety of contests and 10K entrants’ contests are certainly not the only ones…
2014 FanDuel WFBC Finalist
That’s not totally surprising. The Big 2 are trying to steamroll the competition and clear them out. As someone who only uses FD and DK (used to love to play CFB on DS) I can only hope that with these two companies trying to become the preeminent DFS company, this will open the door to some bigger contests with a more evenly structured payout to those who make them and not have such top heavy payouts.
2014 FAFC Finalist
2015 FAWBC Finalist
You should still get paid once your recruits sign up for DK. That was the case with the DS transfer.
RG Tiered Ranking
No competition = inferior product for consumers…
Bad move in the long run…
When the time comes (and trust me, its coming) that FD and DK are the ONLY DFS sites around, what is going to make them push the envelope and give us the best possible product?
I agree with @DKmasestro, the idea of playing in tourneys with 10,000+ entries does not excite me… Might as well play the lottery at that point…
imo Any “edge” (knowledge) people have over others is completely lost when the tourneys have that many people…
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RG Tiered Ranking
So I’m assuming Pick 5 is dead? That was one of the main reason I played on SS, sigh
EXACTLY!!!! This much money at stake, in the hands of a very small group of people who happen to know each other well, with absolutely no oversight/gaming commission….that is extremely frightening! No matter how you look at it, this is horrible for everyone…unless you own a stake in DK/FD. The death of the industry, at least as we have known in it, is imminent.
same here. Love the Pick 5… RIP.
Blogger of the Month
yeah, your starstreet affiliates are gone. Unless the people who signed up didn’t have draftking accounts, but if they made them and didn’t use you as a referral, you’re not getting anything for them.
Blogger of the Month
not to mention the rich get richer because the professionals who have huge bankrolls and all the time (because it’s their job) will have so many entries they are bound to take down all the big events.
yup join the club i was a DS guy and was forced to go over 2 DK hope they get this under control for the sake DFS!!
Blogger of the Month
Ugh
Greed is killing the industry as we know it.
RIP StarStreet
Yeah this is fk’n brutal.. i just transferred my funds over to DK.. i loved the P5 format SS did among being it was my other main site i shopped with in comparison of DK… DK i sure in the fk hope you guys bring in the main liked percs these 2 acquisitions brought to the table… it would be nice anyway.. Fanduel dont sell out on us..lol