U.S. sports betting market leader FanDuel has launched its first foray into the peer-to-peer pick’em fantasy sports market.
While FanDuel has not officially announced the launch of FanDuel Picks, the new product is currently available in Alabama, Arkansas, Minnesota, Oregon and Wisconsin. Notably, these are all states in which FanDuel does not offer online sports betting.
A company spokesperson told SBC Americas that the product is currently available to “a limited number of customers” in those states, although they did not expand on what determined which customers those were. FanDuel also did not confirm whether plans are in the works to expand the offering to other jurisdictions.
The operator’s website explains that the new DFS game allows customers to set their own contest entry amount and compete against other players by picking between three and six players and predicting whether those players will hit “more” or “less” on their projected stat lines.
Customers earn points for every correct prediction and the highest point total wins the contest entry fee pool.
Dustin Gouker’s The Closing Line newsletter was the first to report the news on Wednesday.
FanDuel has had a robust fantasy sports offering for many years and already offers products including FanDuel Faceoff, real money peer-to-peer contests in more than 30 states. But it is a relative latecomer among DFS operators in offering a peer-to-peer pick ’em game and now joins the likes of DraftKings, PrizePicks, Underdog and Betr in providing that service.
Several states have scrutinized against-the-house fantasy games. Some state regulators have gone as far as to take enforcement action to against the likes of PrizePicks and Underdog to push those operations out of their respective markets, arguing that they too closely resemble sports betting.
The likes of Arizona, Colorado and Michigan have all taken steps to restrict or ban pick ’em games in recent years. In some cases, such as in Florida last year, fantasy operators have returned to states with peer-to-peer products after being told to shut down their aganst-the-house products.
