Daily fantasy sports performs well in New York

Daily fantasy sports, legal in the state of New York for the past five months, has performed as anticipated, with local residents spending $180 million in entry fees, according to figures from the New York Gaming Commission issued in an “interactive fantasy sports summary” earlier this week.

That figure is around 10 percent of all DFS entry fees in the US…and it generated $2.9 million in taxes for state coffers.

The Commission numbers record that the industry took in $1.8 billion in entry fees across the U.S. in those five months, suggesting that at least $3 billion in fees could be generated annually, matching previous private industry estimates.

However, industry observers caution that the remaining seven months of 2017 are unlikely to produce a comparable performance, mainly because the National Football League season in the first half of the year draws by far the most entry fees.

Nevertheless, they expect that in FY-2017 the New York taxman will likely reap around $5 million from the vertical.

The bulk of the revenues thus far have been generated by market leaders DraftKings and FanDuel, but New York licensed companies like Yahoo, Fantasy Draft, Draft, DraftDay, Synkt Games, Fanamana and DataForce were also active in the market.

In related news, DraftKings is in the money following a new investment round that it has confirmed raised over $100 million.

The news was broken by the Bloomberg business news network, which reported that Dodgers owner Todd Boehly’s Eldridge Industries led the new investment.

DraftKings CEO Jason Robins issued a statement , saying:

“We have closed a Series E1 round of funding led by Eldridge Industries. As DraftKings continues to grow and pioneer new ways for sports fans around the world to engage with the teams and players they love, we were looking for a funding partner who could bring additional depth to the table.

“The exceptional team at Eldridge does that through their incredible knowledge and success with media properties, providing a deep bench of experts to help fuel DraftKings’ continuing growth as a sports entertainment company.”

Merger plans with FanDuel are meanwhile going ahead, according to press reports, with the expectation that the deal could be finalised towards the end of 2017.

DraftKings has proved popular in the past when it came to raising capital; in 2015 it received a $300 million injection of capital, and last year raised a further $150 million through Ted Leonsis’ Revolution Growth Fund; Leonsis owns the NBA franchise Washington Wizards, and the Washington Vapitals in the NHL (see previous reports).

All told, DraftKings reportedly has raised a total of over $800 million since its foundation in 2012.