Fanduel Raises $70 Million
On the heels of the $41 Million that DraftKings raised in Series C funding, the team over at FanDuel just secured $70 Million in Series D funding. The group is led by Shamrock Capital Advisors and lists other key contributors as NBC Sports Ventures and private equity firm Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co. Existing investor Comcast Ventures were also involved in the latest round saying that the money raised will go toward marketing and acquiring customers. Previous to this FanDuel had raised $18 Million in funding and have created a great marketing plan. As many of you have seen RotoGrinders own Chris “Beermakersfan” Prince plastered all over ESPN and all of your favorite fantasy football magazines. We can surely expect to see more business partnerships like the one that was recently announced with the Orlando Magic as their Champions of the Community Sponsor.
Nigel Eccles and his team decided to post their companies financial information earlier this year to help land some of the best investors available and it appears to be working. As you can see from the image below FanDuel has staked it’s claim as the largest daily fantasy site in existence and posted a healthy $6,176,910 in revenue for the 2nd quarter of 2014.
Showing no signs of stopping Fanduel has already announced the WFFC or World Fantasy Football Championships headlined by the FFFC which will make two players millionaires this year. This is a very exciting time to be a DFS player and in case you missed it in all of the hype surrounding DraftKings announcement the guys at FanDuel bought the rights to the Playboy mansion contract which is sure to be used for a live final in the near future.
My Take:
As someone who joined FanDuel in 2009 it is really great to see the growth they have had and what it has done for the DFS space as a whole. There are two giants in the field and they are being backed by some very solid Venture Capitalist which in my eyes is an amazing sign of things to come. Love them or hate them FanDuel and DraftKings each offer us the opportunity to hit it big doing something we love and for that I am thankful to have both groups.