DraftKings, the daily fantasy sports website, has added 0 million in new investment to continue growing in the ever-more competitive daily fantasy sports market.
Fox Sports, the lead investor, will pay about $150 million for an estimated 11 percent of DraftKings. The company will also advertise on Fox Sports networks.
Over all, the fantasy sports company has raised $426 million, said Jason Robins, DraftKing’s chief executive.
Just two weeks ago, rival DFS site FanDuel announced it had raised $275 million in additional funding.
“There are a lot of great investors out there,” Robins said. “For us, the investors we’ve targeted are somewhat different from FanDuel’s.”
Other new investors in DraftKings are the National Hockey League, Major League Soccer, Madison Square Garden and Legends Hospitality, a stadium concession business owned by the Yankees and the Dallas Cowboys. Existing investors who increased their funding include Major League Baseball.
Robins said DraftKings wants to continue to distance itself from competitors with new products and social media features. The company also plans to expand to Europe and Asia, starting with the United Kingdom.
Eric Shanks, the president of Fox Sports, said that daily fantasy sports “is an area that’s core to our main product. It drives deeper fan engagement. The more you play, the more you watch. It’s a virtuous cycle.”
DraftKings plans to spend about $250 million advertising on Fox’s networks over the next few years.
“We were going to spend a lot of money with Fox, anyway, where a lot of live sports content is,” Robins said. “Fox has heavy coverage sports that we offer competitions in M.M.A., Nascar, soccer and golf.”
In a related story, DraftKing’s rival FanDuel has just acquired Scottish mobile development firm Kotikan. Founded in 2007, Kotikan began working with FanDuel in 2013 and helped create the company’s iOS and Android mobile applications.
And in another story, lesser-known fantasy site FantasyUp has apparently been experiencing delays in making withdrawal payments to customers. In several online message boards, officials for the company have said the delays were temporary while the company negotiates a yet-unannounced deal with a “nationally known brand” that they say will significantly raise its profile in the industry.
Still, since player’s accounts should ostensibly be separate from the site’s assets, the situation has prompted several commentators to call for more regulation of DFS sites.
