DraftKings Bought Kountermove Fantasy MMA

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UFC fantasy sports partner DraftKings is acquiring MMA and combat sports fantasy website Kountermove.

The deal brings Kountermove’s 30,000 registered users to fantasy sports titan DraftKings, which launched its MMA platform in 2014 and partnered this past February with the UFC. DraftKings, according to the company, has roughly 200,000 MMA players.

“We had been looking for opportunities to grow our presence in combat sports, so it was a very logical fit for us to come together,” DraftKings founder Matt Kalish today told MMAjunkie.

A press release announcing the acquisition is expected shortly. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Upon its MMA launch, DraftKings echoed Kountermove in fantasy UFC games, prompting users to draft a team of five fighters with a salary cap and earn points based on their performance at an event.

Kalish said the acquisition builds on DraftKings’ existing platform and accelerates the companies’ growth in combat sports. He expects an additional 5,000 paid users to migrate to DraftKings and a higher level of competition in fantasy MMA games.

“Any time you can come on and compete against another group of people in bigger games, the idea of coming together is really an added experience for everybody to be a part of it.”

Added Kountermove co-founder Brian Knapp: “We’ve gotten to know the DraftKings team over the past year-and-a-half since they entered the market, and being the leaders in fantasy for combat sports, really looked to them as a partner for growing the overall space of MMA. We at Kountermove knew that the real way to have many, many more MMA fans enjoying fantasy MMA worldwide was to partner with the leader in overall daily fantasy.”

DraftKings has pursued an aggressive business strategy in other sports spaces in a bid to capture the fantasy, purchasing the No. 3 and No. 4 fantasy sites in a long-running competition with FanDuel.

Over the past six months, DraftKings has battled states which believe the website represents an illegal gambling operation. New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman filed an injunction to stop its operations in the state and sued to recover the money the company has made in the state. A scandal over an employee’s $350,000 payday prompted a federal investigation. While no charges were filed, the scandal cost the company an advertising partnership with ESPN.

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Thoughts?

Does this mean the tommy toe hold show now wont start with that annoying kountermove piece that sounds like its cut off that begining of a sentence?

Most likely.