Daily fantasy sports operator Boom Fantasy has announced a $2 million seed round, shaking up an industry that has pressed pause on expansion over to regulatory woes.
The new investment round was led by Founders Fund’s FF Angel with participation from other sports executives and owners from ESPN and an MLB team, the company said. Cyan Banister, a partner at Founders Fund who has investments in Uber and SpaceX, led the Boom Fantasy investment.
The New York-based start-up, which offers the DFS equivalent of in-play betting, as it allows players to compete in contests with windows as short as 10 minutes.
Founded by Steve Murphy and Assaf Einat, Boom Fantasy essentially offers a series of prop wagers–between seven and 50, depending on the tournament format–on various aspects of live sports events. Wager correctly on more questions than your opponents and boom goes your dynamite. The real-money product is live in 12 U.S. states, while the play-money version is accessible in all 50 states.
Boom Fantasy had raised $1.4 million in 2015 before it launched its first in-game fantasy sports product last year.
Doubling user base
Boom Fantasy also said that it has acquired “substantial assets” of former fantasy sports operator Draftpot for an unspecified amount of money. The acquisition is expected to double Boom Fantasy’s player database as the operator will receive all of Draftpot’s intellectual property, technology, user email addresses and user history information as well as a transfer of account balances.
“With this acquisition and funding round, Boom Fantasy will have larger prize pools, exciting new gameplay, and even better customer support,” Einat said in a statement.
Draftpot’s CTO Joshua Hughes will join Boom Fantasy as part of the deal.
Murphy told Forbes’ Darren Heitner that the acquisition puts Boom Fantasy “in the top 3—DraftKings, DRAFT/Betfair and us.”
Draftpot had raised roughly $3 million before it was acquired by Boom Fantasy, in addition to a $2.2 million seed round closing in September 2015.
“I think is getting us an additional level of credibility. This industry has been so tumultuous—so many companies have gone out of business—that for a medium stakes player, they can be resistant to try a new platform. We think the more they see Boom Fantasy do deals like this, the more comfortable they will be putting $100-$1,000 on our platform,” said Murphy, according to the report.
