Billion Dollar Fantasy

Starred review from August 26, 2019
In this entertaining debut, Sports Illustrated editor Chen examines a decade of online fantasy sports, in which players compete for cash prizes by assembling rosters of professional sports players. Chen interviews the chief executives of FanDuel (a New York company founded in 2009 by five Brits who’d first tried a website that would allow visitors to wager on predicting news events) and DraftKings (founded in Boston in 2012 and evolved from sports nerd Jason Robins’s “obsession with stats and strategy”), and shows how they created billion-dollar businesses. From the outset, the founders of both companies were concerned about the legality of betting on athletes’ performances, but they believed a loophole in the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act allowed fantasy sports to be considered a game of skill rather than chance. In 2018, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down the 1992 Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act, the basis for attempts to shut down the two fantasy sports websites, opening the door not only to the sites but to sports betting in all 50 states, a development endorsed by professional sports leagues that had once opposed gambling. Fans of financial thrillers such as Barbarians at the Gate will be excited by this insider account of the dizzying rise of fantasy sports websites.

September 1, 2019

The battle for online fantasy sports supremacy was a roller-coaster ride for its two contenders: DraftKings and FanDuel. Chen (senior editor, Sports Illustrated ) captures the action in this energetic and entertaining account of DraftKings CEO Jason Robins, FanDuel CEO Nigel Eccles, and chief marketing executive Lesley Eccles, and how these three visionaries turned online gaming ideas into two unicorn (assets of $1 billion) companies. Chen presents lively stories, especially of Lesley Eccles, who succeeded in an overwhelmingly male-dominated arena. In addition, the book is laced with profiles of the DraftKing's and FanDuel's partners, venture capitalists, and high rollers who gambled heavily. Both companies were nearly destroyed by an alleged insider trading scandal but bounced back, largely owing to legislation that paved their way to massive growth. However, the Federal Trade Commission denied an attempted merger because it would have given the new company 90 percent control of the fantasy sports market. VERDICT The brisk narrative moves nimbly through the online entertainment industry and will find fans among those intrigued by fantasy sports. See David Kushner's The Players Ball for another take on the world of wired entertainment.--Karl Helicher, formerly with Upper Merion Twp. Lib., King of Prussia, PA

Copyright 2019 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

September 1, 2019
Fantasy football began quietly in the 1980s, but, with the internet, it grew phenomenally, and with that growth came gambling, eventually on an international scale. This account of the rise and fall of two internet startups that became billion-dollar enterprises, FanDuel and DraftKings, details how fantasy-football gambling went from kitchen tables (buddies throwing money into a pot) to a massive operation in which players pitted their drafting expertise against others across the globe. Author Chen gets close to the individuals on both sides of the Atlantic, especially Nigel and Lesley Eccles of FanDuel, who developed the software behind these digitally driven fantasy leagues, managed their operation, and then competed with DraftKings for an ever-larger share of the enormous profits. Scandal intruded when one company's employee used inside information to bet on an opponent's site. With criminal investigations from the FBI came attempts at regulation, but the story is a long way from over. Suggest this both to fantasy-sports participants and to readers of Ben Mezrich's The Accidental Billionaires (2009), about the founding and growth of Facebook.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2019, American Library Association.)