The NYT digs into the ‘clubby, cozy’ relationship of DraftKings and FanDuel

The daily fantasy sports industry has faced increasing scrutiny this NFL season. Stephan Savoia, File / AP

By Eric Levenson @ejleven

October 12, 2015

1 minute to read

While daily fantasy sports companies DraftKings and FanDuel compete for the same market share, the two companies have “a long-held pattern of overlapping interests and close relationships,’’ The New York Times reports.

DraftKings, based out of Boston, and FanDuel, based in New York, both have come under increased scrutiny in recent weeks after a DraftKings employee released private lineup information to the public and then won $350,000 in a FanDuel competition. That revelation has sparked an increased interest in how DraftKings and FanDuel employees compete and win big prizes in each others’ competitions.

The Times details a number of employees at these companies who have won big prizes in contests hosted by the competitor. DraftKings employees have won less than $10 million in FanDuel contests, a spokesperson for FanDuel told the Times.

But the ability to win money at the competitor’s site is so entrenched that it’s essentially part of the recruiting pitch, DraftKings founder Paul Liberman said in a conference at Babson College in late September.

“We have some people who make significantly more money off of our competitors’ sites than they do working for DraftKings,’’ he said.

Liberman then referred to one employee who had to have his schedule limited because of all the time he spent playing daily fantasy.

“We have to let him do that; otherwise he’s never going to work for us,’’ Liberman said.

Both DraftKings and FanDuel have since banned their employees from playing daily fantasy for cash at other fantasy sites.

You can read the whole story on the “clubby, cozy connections between the two companies at the head of the booming, unregulated, multibillion-dollar daily fantasy industry’’ at The New York Times.