Betting on sports has existed for decades, whether it involves horse racing, professional football or mixed martial arts. However, this pastime has not always been legal across the United States, a trend that is changing and opening up new markets for FanDuel. Here is what to know about the sportsbook.
Originally founded in Edinburgh, Scotland, FanDuel started life as a site called Hubdub. This news prediction platform gave users the ability to bet virtual money on various events, including the presidential election. However, the company essentially closed in 2010 in order for the founders to focus all of their efforts on FanDuel, a new daily fantasy sports site.
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“It was a classic pivot,” CEO Nigel Eccles told VentureBeat in 2016. “2008 was an election year, and we thought it would be cool to build a prediction market where you could predict the outcome of running news stories. And the election was one of the biggest ones. Users loved it; we had a ton of engagement. But the fatal flaw was that there wasn’t really a business model. So even though we were getting the scale in users, we just couldn’t figure out how we would turn it into an interesting business.”
Eccles explained that they headed to South by Southwest to figure out where to take the company. The company knew how to build a game that people engaged with regularly, but they wanted something “with a more robust business model.” Eccles and his team noticed that fantasy sports were a significant market, which played a major role in the company’s evolution. FanDuel has since expanded from daily fantasy sports and included legal sports betting in its list of options.
While FanDuel is an international company and millions of users on its daily fantasy sports platform, the sportsbook side is not yet available in all 50 states. Currently, only users in Arkansas, Delaware, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Michigan, Mississippi, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Tennessee, Virginia and West Virginia have some form of legal sports betting available. Although New York only allows in-person wagers made at Tioga Downs. Mobile gambling is still illegal in the state.
FanDuel offers several betting options for users, including basic choices between the winner of each matchup. There are also more in-depth wagers available based on player performance, the number of yards or points in a given matchup, and the color of celebratory Gatorade. For example, Super Bowl LV viewers can head to FanDuel and make wagers about whether Tom Brady or Patrick Mahomes will throw an interception first.
