FanDuel launches golf product
New contests to be made available to the public in March
FanDuel has announced the launch of a golf product, with the beta version going live in the coming weeks before a full launch in March ahead of the Masters.
Golf will become the sixth sport FanDuel offers contests on, after the firm launched English Premier League games earlier this year.
“Over the past several months, we have been laser-focused on building a variety of new products such as NBA InPlay (a real-time fantasy basketball app) and our first fantasy soccer product in the United States,” said Nigel Eccles, CEO of FanDuel.
“As we continue to expand our offerings, and with golf growing in popularity over the past few years, adding a fantasy golf product to our platform is an optimal way to keep sports fans engaged and get them excited for the golf tournaments coming up in 2017.”
The company said its version of the game boasted a “unique scoring system”, as well as a tweak on DraftKings’ golf format, whereby users choose one set of golfers to compete in rounds one and two, and new golfers for rounds three and four.
Industry insiders speculated that the recent launch of soccer and golf is an effort to bring the FanDuel product closer to DraftKings, ahead of a merger of the two companies that will likely see them pick one brand name.
Providing an update on the merger progress, Eccles told Yahoo Sports yesterday that the company felt “really good” about getting the deal past the relevant competition committees.
“Our lawyers feel very good about it,” says Eccles. “And the way we look at it is the market is fantasy sports. The idea of actually trying to narrow down this smaller market as DFS we just think isn’t correct, it doesn’t reflect the choices our players make whenever they play on Yahoo, on ESPN, on FanDuel, or DraftKings.”