After less than a year of operation, daily fantasy sports operator FanDuel has reportedly closed its United Kingdom-facing domain in order to better concentrate on its core market in the United States.
According to a report from Calvin Ayre, customers of FanDuel were sent an e-mail on Friday stating that the New York City-based firm would “not be offering contests in the United Kingdom this season” but that this “hiatus for the 2017-18 season” may not be permanent as it hopes to “be back in the future bringing you more of the games you love”.
“If you had funds in your FanDuel account, your balance has been credited to the most recent bank card we have on record for you,” read a statement posted on FanDuel’s United Kingdom-facing website. “You should also have received an e-mail with more details.”
FanDuel reportedly received its license from the Gambling Commission regulator in July of last year before premiering its United Kingdom-facing site the following month. Rival operator DraftKings had earlier launched a similar service while web services provider Yahoo! threw its hat into the British daily fantasy sports ring in December.
In a statement, FanDuel reportedly declared that the suspension would allow it to “focus on our product in the United States” and that it would now be “allocating all of our resources towards ramping up a United States product that consumers love and building out complementary fantasy sports products”.
“There are over 53 million people playing fantasy sports in the United States and we are investing all of our resources on that market,” read the statement from FanDuel, which also has offices in Edinburgh and Glasgow.