Denmark’s former betting monopoly 
Danske Spil has acquired a 60% stake in Scandinavian fantasy sports operator Swush.
The acquisition will help Danske Spil to bolster its digital product offering, as it plans to scale up its operations for the licensed Danish online gambling market.
Swush provides a number of seasonal fantasy sports games for some of the largest media groups in Europe such as Eurosport and ESPN. The fantasy sports product has a strong presence in the Danish market, with national broadcasters and media owners TV Sport, MTG Viasat and Ekstra Bladet as partners.
Last year, Swush had 200,000 users registered to its seasonal games in Denmark, while it also held market leading positions in Sweden and Norway.
“Swush.com’s current and future daily fantasy sport platform is built much like a poker network, so that participants from many different partners play against each other for a shared prize pool,” said Swush.com partner and co-founder Jesper Carstensen.
Both parties already have an active relationship with Swush providing fantasy sports games to Danske Spil for the past three years.
Danske Spil would not disclose the price it paid for its stake in Swush, however the fantasy sports operator recorded 2014 profits of DKR 4.5 million (£350,000)
Meanwhile, daily fantasy sports operator FanDuel is set to expand its workforce by hiring 200 software specialists in its new Glasgow City offices.
In December 2014, Fanduel, which currently operates in in Edinburgh, New York, Los Anegels and Orlando, announced that it would open a new development office in Glasgow to increase its product development and delivery capabilities as well as gain access to top quality IT professionals.
“We are very pleased to have found a home in Glasgow. We know most Glasgow-based engineers have no wish to relocate, so it makes perfect sense for us to open an office here,” said FanDuel CEO Nigel Eccles. “We have worked hard to create a culture that inspires great work and promotes a healthy work-life balance and 2 West Regent Street (office address) will enable us to do that in a fast-paced environment. I pay tribute to the partner-led approach adopted by [Scottish chartered surveying practice] Shepherd, which enabled us to identify the deal pretty quickly.”
