The Daily Fantasy Sports landscape is awash these days in upstart operators fighting for a piece of the ever-expanding pie. Founded in 2012, Major League Fantasy is banking on the social aspects of its platform and its recent deal with Latitude 360 Inc. to help it stand out from the crowd.
MLF, which announced a partnership with the Golden State Warriors in March, entered into a letter of intent to be acquired by Latitude 360 for $8.5 million in cash and stock last month as the restaurant/entertainment venue announced plans to launch “fantasy sports books” in its on-site sports theatres for the coming NFL season.
MLF founder/CEO Jesse Merl spoke with DailyFantasyTalk recently about the acquisition, his plans for MLF, and what the industry might look like with the looming entry of Yahoo and others.
DFT: It’s obviously been an eventful year for MLF. Tell me a little about Major League Fantasy’s history.
Jesse Merl: I founded MLF with the vision of daily fantasy sports catering to the inherent social nature of traditional fantasy sports. This was and still is missing from the current DF offerings on the market today. We built a fully integrated social network for players to interact with while playing. What’s the point of playing against your buddy if you have no means of alerting the community that you beat them after you win?
What are your plans with Latitude360?
When I first met with Brent Brown, the CEO at Latitude, I recognized instantly that he is a visionary like me. We are dreamers and love building things that don’t exist. As our two organizations merge, we are pioneering the live fantasy experience for the same reason that we built the social networking component of the MLF site. For MLF, it’s always been about using fantasy to promote interaction and group fun and the Latitude360 brand has the same vision for their venue attractions.
What made the acquisition route more attractive than a big round of funding for Major League Fantasy?
If it were Latitude360 funding our round of funding rather than an acquisition then I wouldn’t have a clear answer, but absent it being Latitude funding the round, the answer is that launching this new vision is going to be an all-hands-on-deck project for the next six to 12 months for my entire team. We are making major enhancements to the product which will further separate our product on desktop, and the corresponding 360 Fantasy Live mobile application, which is a couple months away, is going to set a new standard of quality in the mobile fantasy product category. The initial product work is still only a few months of scope but the actual physical and procedural implementation of the game into the venues will be an all-encompassing job which needs to be my team’s only focus. In order to do this correctly, we can’t have any other competing interests or distractions.
How about your personal background? What did you do before moving into the DFS space?
My background is littered with companies I started and jobs I took which I could make sound really impressive if I wanted to, but nothing about my background matters because I never loved what I did before. The only thing that I thought mattered in my career was making money because I never thought you can make real money doing something that you love. I’m happy to report that I was firmly incorrect in that assumption, but if I made 30k a year doing what I do, I would take it over 400k doing something I don’t care about. When you do what you love, you never work a day in your life. I do nothing but work seven days a week and I don’t even notice because there is nothing I would rather be doing.
DFS is booming, but the field is crowded and competition for players’ attention must be fierce. What do you feel like differentiates Major League Fantasy?
We are doing this interview because we are launching the first live fantasy sports books after being the first DF company with a fully integrated social network. We also have the best-looking CEO in the industry…which is what really matters.
Ha! Nice. What innovation are you most excited about, just in case good looks alone don’t shake up the industry?
Of the things I can talk about publicly, it’s the launch of the live in-venue games. I know it’s going to be a home run.
What do you think is the fairest criticism of the industry right now?
Same as it has always been. It’s 100 percent about money and not about playing with your friends.
Where do you see the industry in five years? Is there room for a third major site?
FanDuel and DraftKings better hope so because Yahoo is coming in and they certainly won’t be No. 3 at the end of NFL season. Yahoo has always been the gold standard and the company I aspired to mimic in anything fantasy. In two years, the fifth most-successful DF company will be worth 300 million bucks or more. Most people look at a number like that and start thinking that being No. 5 would be great to aspire to. It’s never been about money for MLF. We want to be the No. 1 site in the industry and we’ve always known that shooting for the top spot for the right reasons will lead to the corresponding big valuation and/or acquisition. With Yahoo coming into the space, creating a new vertical like the live game is a mandatory part of the journey for a small DF site with the aspirations we have. Operating as a division of Latitude360 doesn’t change our goals. We are using this new way of playing to catapult our ascent toward the top spot.