Who Owns Underdog Fantasy?

Underdog launched in 2020 into a market dominated by DraftKings and FanDuel, where new entrants were supposed to be impossible. The wedge was Best Ball, a draft-and-forget fantasy format that needed no weekly lineup management. Big guaranteed prize pools for flagship contests like Best Ball Mania turned a niche format into the brand's signature product.

Pick'em, the prop-style game where users predict player statistics, became the second engine. It spread quickly because it could operate in states where full sports betting remained illegal, giving Underdog customers in California, Texas, and Florida that licensed sportsbooks could not touch.

The 2022 Series B led by BlackRock and Acies funded the first licensed push into sports betting. Underdog secured a sportsbook license in North Carolina and launched there in 2024, holding additional licenses in Ohio and Colorado, with Missouri entry planned around that market's launch. The company also built a media arm, signing former players and analysts and running the fastest news-breaking operation in fantasy content.

March 2025 brought the Series C at a $1.225 billion valuation, making Underdog the first sports betting unicorn created in three years. In September 2025 the company added prediction markets through a partnership with Crypto.com, offering CFTC-regulated event contracts in 16 states without legal sports betting, then moved to launch prediction markets on its own federally regulated exchange. Levine told CNBC the company projected about $500 million in revenue for 2025, its fifth year of operation.

Through 2026 the strategy stayed consistent: expand pick'em and prediction products where betting is restricted, grow the licensed sportsbook where legal, and use the media network to lower acquisition costs.