Plenty of Backers to Fund Underdog Fantasy’s Investment

Investments to the sum of 10 million USD has been secured by Underdog Fantasy to further the company’s growth and fuel innovation. An online party was also held to celebrate the goal that was reached with the diverse investors. Furthermore, the fantasy sports operator also announced that it would run its second tournament that follows its Best Ball format. A tournament that will earn one smart and lucky winner a total of 1,000,001 USD. It will be a season-long tournament and is one of the four games that Underdog Fantasy currently offers to its users.

Underdog Fantasy Offerings

The season-long tournament is both easy and exciting to participate in. It involves drafting 18 players for a team with the owners only choosing players once before the tournament begins. This means that for the entire season, the same players will be present with no releases or trades allowed. Points will be calculated at each position and these points will be added to the owner’s final score. The format allows players to enjoy fantasy sports as an owner and a spectator but not have to worry about making any adjustments to the team during the season. So, any other activities that players have planned can be enjoyed fully without the stress of having to make last-minute changes to their teams.

While season-long tournaments are very popular with Underdog Fantasy, the company has other games on offer as well. Underdog also offers single-player daily fantasy, multiplayer fantasy games and Battle Royale games that happen every week. The single-player fantasy games involve a parlay format where the Underdog user chooses between 2 and 5 athletes and wins if each of the athletes chosen were correct.

Interesting List of Investors

The investment was accrued through a long list of investors spanning from professional athletes to musicians and just about everything in between. The list includes venture capitalist and previous investor Kevin Carter, Breon Corcoran the former CEO of Paddy Power Betfair and Shark Tank investor and the owner of the Dallas Mavericks, Mark Cuban. Carter had invested in the fantasy sports game, DRAFT. The game was founded by the co-founder and Chairman of Underdog, Jeremy Levine.

Levine said that Carter was a natural choice for this round of required investors given that he was the first to invest in Levine’s last company and that Carter believed in what Levine was doing before any other investors were even interested. To make up the total investment, athletes such as Wilson Chandler, Matthew Delladova, Jared Goff and Kevin Durant also contributed.

Investments from musical talents Gunna, Future, Nas and the Chainsmokers are also among the list of investors. Additionally, investors from the gaming industry include the founders of SimpleBet, Roto Grinders, The Action Network, Eilers & Krejcik and Fantasy Labs as well as Adam Schefter, the ESPN NFL insider. Finally, Adam Lefkoe, a sports media legend and the host of the Bleacher Report, who was also reported to be part of the online celebration.

A Fantasy Sports Innovator

Underdog Fantasy is known and celebrated as one of the fantasy sports operators that have been significantly innovative and even known to have transformed the fantasy sports genre into what players can enjoy today. Others have shared this praise as well, such as Guillotine League which has weekly NFL leagues where players are pitted against each other and at the end of each week, the player with the lowest number of points gets eliminated. These innovations make the concept of fantasy sports even more exciting than they have ever been before.

Furthermore, similar to Underdog, Monkey Knife Fight and PrizePicks offer games modelled after sports betting. However, these games are designed mostly for players that live in jurisdictions where legal sports betting is not available. These innovations have garnered attention and investments in recent months for the aforementioned companies. PrizePicks has been able to get funding from Andrew Bogut, a former NBA player, Andruw Jones, a former professional baseball player and Phil Hellmuth, a professional poker player. As for Monkey Knife Fight, the company was acquired by Bally’s Corporation in January 2021. Fantasy sports has gained immense popularity over the past few years and with innovative solutions to keep the industry exciting, there should be further investment in the market very soon.