Scottish tech 'unicorn' FanDuel is finally going to launch its fantasy sports platform in the UK
The company - valued at over a billion dollars, thereby making it a "unicorn" - allows people to create fantasy NFL (American football), MLB (baseball), NBA (basketball), and NHL (hockey) teams and enter them into leagues where they can win cash prizes. It has attracted over 1 million paid users and raised $361 million (£255 million) from investors.
But FanDuel, founded in 2009, has been slow to launch a product that caters to its home market of the UK. That's about to change.
"We're launching this year in the UK," said FanDuel cofounder Lesley Eccles at The Europas tech conference in London on Tuesday.
FanDuel is planning to launch a football (or soccer) version of its platform in the UK this August, just in time for the launch of the Barclays Premier League 2016/2017 season.
It is currently trialling a beta version of its football offering with a couple of hundred people. The beta version is catered towards the Euros.
Details on how a Premier League version of FanDuel might work are scarce right now but it's likely that it would allow Premier League fans to pay to create fantasy teams that they can enter into a league with friends and/or other FanDuel users with the potential to win money
Eccles declined to comment on the rumours that FanDuel is about to merge with rival DraftKings.
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