It is pretty common for friends to chat over a few beers and sports. The conversation soon leads to players’ stats, winning percentages, fantasy sport’s tactics and how you would create a better product than the ones you currently play.
Fantasy sport is a big and serious business where some fans are willing to put aside allegiances into teams they support and hope to get all the fantasy points they can and win their league’s money pool. Virtually every sport has at least one platform dedicated to fantasy leagues, but the gap is that most of them are dedicated to North American leagues like the NFL and the NBA.
The rapid growth of fantasy sports platforms over the last few years presented a business opportunity to FantasyKing’ founders to start a similar thing in Australia. FantasyKing enables users to join sports leagues according to buy-in cost, choose a team, and wait for their management skills to come out on top and win them the prize pool.
Points are awarded for different skills demonstrated by players, whether it’s keeping a clean sheet, scoring a goal, tackles made, and so on. Free games are made available each week to let new users try the product or for those who don’t have or don’t want to spend money. The paid competitions include game ranges from winner takes all (WTA) to tiered leagues with varying rewards and risks.
The startup is based in Melbourne and founded by Andrew Whiteman, Matt Tapper, and Paul MacTier. Whiteman has been working on another sport-related startup and looks to capitalize on the huge fan base for English Premier League in Australia and Asia. FantasyKing was launched last month with AFL as the test games. Whiteman confirmed that NRL and cricket will be added to the platform over the coming months.
The Australian startup is striving to be the go-to daily fantasy sports platform in the local market. Its biggest platforms include DraftKings that raised $300 million in a Series D funding round in July from investors such as including Major League Soccer, Major League Baseball Ventures and the National Hockey League. FanDuel is also a key competitor that managed to raise a $275 million Series E round in June.
[Source] Melbourne daily fantasy sports startup FantasyKing wants to be the FanDuel of the Asian market
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