Then, in July 2015, came a three year advertising deal with ESPN worth worth $250 million. DraftKings signed a deal with the MLB in April, 2015. The following year saw another wave of deals with the biggest sports leagues and media companies. This was one of the first public partnerships between a major professional sports league and a DFS company or sports betting company. That served as a groundbreaking moment for DFS and sports betting as a whole. One such firm was The Raine Group which focuses on IPO structures, intellectual property protections and mergers.īy November, 2014, DraftKings penned a deal to become the official daily fantasy sports service of the NHL. Just a month or so after that acquisition, DraftKings made $41 million in funding from a variety of different venture capital firms public.

In the summer of 2014, DraftKings acquired rival DraftStreet and allegedly increased its user base by 50 percent. The former reported roughly 50,000 daily active users and nearly a million registered players, though neither figure was independently verified. Within two years, DraftKings was making huge waves in the DFS space, with massive acquisitions and investments during 2014.īy early 2014, DFS was a huge hit with DraftKings and FanDuel leading the way.

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