The week that was in Daily Fantasy Sports …
Amaya aquires Victiv
The obvious headliner this week is Amaya’s acquisition of Victiv, setting the Poker Stars parent company up with an existing DFS operator with a month to spare before the NFL season kicks off.
The new site will be re-branded as StarsDraft; in the meantime, the URL is sending users to Victiv, which is still active.
Amaya’s entrance into DFS has been anticipated since CEO David Baazov announced the company’s plans in March. Rumors of acquisitions had been floated all summer, and Victiv was among those whispered to be a favorite if Amaya decided against building its own platform.
The acquisition should expedite the process considerably, giving Amaya a format with which to re-engage with its estranged U.S. customer base.
And though the introduction of a company with Amaya’s girth and brand recognition is noteworthy, it’s not expected to shake up the status quo dramatically in 2015. As industry analysts had predicted, Baazov indicated during Thursday’s second quarter earnings call that the company would not be putting a substantial investment into its DFS product “until the market matured.”
Edge Up gets boost in fantasy tools arms race with help from IBM, Watson
Fantasy sports are emerging a big derivative market (of a derivative market). Player recommendations, lineup optimizers, scripts builders, et al., have boomed in the last year with the rising popularity of daily fantasy sports as a primary driver.
Some potentially significant news on that front: IBM is now involved. The multinational tech giant announced this week that it was partnering with Edge Up sports to integrate its super computer Watson into an app that will provide fantasy football recommendations.
Watson, a renowned piece of “cognitive technology” that famously defeated the world’s best Jeopardy players and has since been deployed in fields such as health care and education, will now help players analyze the best starter at their flex position.
Though not specifically designed for daily fantasy, its applications would appear obvious for DFS players.
A quick breakdown of the service from fastcompany.com:
Edge Up has developed tools that track things like NFL players’ Twitter activity, coaching statistics, and articles by leading football writers, all of which could add more arrows to fantasy players’ quivers. By adding Watson to the equation, IBM wrote in a release, the Edge Up app ‘will access and analyze ever-growing volumes and sources of football and player-related data to generate evidence-based recommendations.’
Among the factors the Watson-powered app will analyze are football players’ physical and mental condition, as well as their injury histories, how analysts view them, how weather affects them, how well they play on grass or turf, how they perform against key opponents, and more.
Currently, Edge Up is raising funds for its launch via KickStarter.
Mushnick vs. DFS
New York Post columnist Phil Mushnick set his sights on DFS this week, firing off a scathing piece under the headline “Leagues and big-time networks use DraftKings, FanDuel to rip off fans.”
The traffic generated must have been encouraging, because a couple of days later he came back with “How do we know daily fantasy sports aren’t a scam?”
Oh boy.
I’m not going to spend a lot of time breaking down the arguments, because Mushnick is playing (very) loose with facts in favor of appealing to emotion. That’s not to say that he doesn’t have any cogent points to make—just that they’re buried under sensationalist scare tactics.
DraftKings’ marketing onslaught continues
In its quest for certain omnipresence, DraftKings secured a deal this week with International Speedway Corporation, owner of some of NASCAR’s most prominent race tracks, including Daytona International Speedway and Talladega Speedway.
Still to come: Jerry World. Maybe.
A Dallas-based reporter says a deal between DraftKings and the Dallas Cowboys that would include a fantasy bar/lounge in AT&T Stadium is in the works.
Now’s probably a good time to remind you that if you’re tired of all the DFS advertising, we’ve got some bad news.