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FanDuel Acquires eSports Company AlphaDraft, Also Jumps Into Competitive Video Gaming

Aren’t business rivalries fun?

by Kurt Wagner
Imeh Akpanudosen / Getty Images

Aren’t business rivalries fun?

Just one day after fantasy sports site DraftKings announced it would soon offer fantasy competitions around competitive video gaming, rival FanDuel announced the acquisition of AlphaDraft, a site that offers fantasy contests pegged to competitive video gaming.

AlphaDraft was apparently shopping itself around and asking for as much as $25 million, but FanDuel purchased it for less, according to multiple sources. A FanDuel spokesperson declined to share terms of the deal.

DraftKings and FanDuel are competing in every sense of the word. They’re racing to partner with all your favorite sports teams, they’re throwing millions of dollars at TV and media properties, and now they’re both going after a growing market of video game enthusiasts.

Competitive gaming has an audience of 134 million people worldwide, according to market research firm SuperData. So there’s good reason for DraftKings and FanDuel to care about League of Legends in addition to the Dallas Cowboys and Green Bay Packers. AlphaDraft doesn’t break out the size of its user base, but CEO Todd Peterson said in May he was hopeful the company would reach one million users by the end of the year.

Unlike DraftKings, though, which is building fantasy eSports into its core product offering, AlphaDraft will remain operational and serve as FanDuel’s eSports arm. So the two entities will be separate, but under the FanDuel umbrella. AlphaDraft took $5 million in venture capital money back in May from a slew of investors.

This article originally appeared on Recode.net.

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