Score bets on fantasy game app
Free product hopes to avoid some of the legal issues faced by some larger American sites
Canadian digital sports media company the Score launched a fantasy sports gaming app Thursday designed to deal with some of the criticisms that have plagued such large U.S. fantasy sports websites as DraftKings and FanDuel.
Called QuickDraft, the Score’s app features a more casual fantasy game, though it offers cash prizes and free admission.
Benjie Levy, the Score’s president and chief operating officer, said the company had planned to launch a paid fantasy product, but because of the controversies surrounding the burgeoning industry, as well as potential regulatory investigations starting in the U.S., the Toronto-based developer decided to launch a free product to get some traction in the market.
“We’re not insensitive to what’s going on,” he said. “We thought the best decision is to get this out there . . . make it available free and build on it from there.”
The game is based on a product by San Franciscobased Swoopt, which the Score acquired last year.
Launching for North America only, this is a mobile product in which the first games will focus on NFL football and require players to use a budget to pick five players — as opposed to lineups of nine or 12 athletes that are the formats of most daily fantasy products.
And unlike games in which the pool grows as more players sign up and add to the pot, the first Score games will have a limited number of participants and be free to enter, which is one of the reasons it will be available in U.S. states where other daily fantasy sites (DFS) are banned. Players will also be limited to only one entry per contest.
Daily fantasy sites have come under scrutiny for several reasons, including the fact there are professional players who flood pools with hundreds of entries, using scripts and algorithms to determine lineups. It has also been reported that many of DFS winners are employees of the companies running the games.
“When you’re trying to play fantasy sports and you’ve got three kids and you’re working, you don’t have time to do research and draft a 12-man lineup against one of these professional DFS players that you’re seeing on some of these other big sites in the U.S.,” Levy said. “It really is kind of moving away from sort of the spirit of why people started playing fantasy sports in the first place.”
Initially, QuickDraft NFL games will offer two types of product, one that includes all games each week and another just for Sunday’s games.
There will be public and private games. The public games include a $5,000 Kickoff Special winner-take-all prize limited to 5,000 players, as well as league-style contests with prize pools on a sliding scale and smaller tournaments from $1,000 down to $20.
The Score expects to give away tens of thousands of dollars per week, much less than some of the big sites.
Levy hopes that the smaller scale will be one defence that keeps the sharks from being drawn to the Score’s games. As well, Score employees will be prohibited from taking part in the public games.
A game app is a departure for the company, bestknown for its award-winning sports information, news and scores apps. As for the future, Levy said the Score will wait and see how the games evolve. There will be more sports coming and the business model might change as the industry gets sorted out.
“This could evolve to some kind of ad- or sponsorship-driven model. It could lead to a type of paid fantasy game, when we have more clarity on the regulatory front.”