Both companies were putting a brave face on it in their official statements on Thursday afternoon.<\/p>\n
“We believe it is in the best interests of our customers, employees, and investors to terminate our agreement to merge with FanDuel and move forward as a separate company,”said DraftKings CEO Jason Robins.<\/p>\n
FanDuel CEO Nigel Eccles said his company had decided to merge with DraftKings because he believed the deal would have \u201cincreased investment in growth and product development thereby benefiting consumers and the greater sports entertainment industry.<\/p>\n
“There is still enormous, untapped market opportunity for FanDuel, and we will continue to execute our strategy to grow our business and further expand the fantasy sports industry,” he added.<\/p>\n
\n
Eccles was apparently the least enthusiastic of the two about the merger. In an interview with Bloomberg in 2015, he said it could never happen, claiming that DraftKings made bad business decisions. He cited, as an example, its deal with Fox Sports, in which Fox agreed to invest $150 million in the company in return for DraftKing\u2019s commitment to spending $250 million advertising on its network.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
\u201cIf we merge, we take on those deals that we\u00a0turned down,\u201d he said.\u00a0\u201cThat doesn\u2019t improve our economics, it makes it worse. I can see why it would be\u00a0attractive\u00a0to them.\u00a0I don\u2019t know why they think it would be attractive to us.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Joint rulers of the daily fantasy sports (DFS) market DraftKings and FanDuel have walked away from a proposed merger of equals, less than a month after the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) moved to block the deal on grounds of antitrust “fair competition” issues. The two companies announced the termination of the tie-up on Thursday, just […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":42,"featured_media":54598,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[62,19,16,1074],"tags":[],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n
DraftKings, FanDuel Jettison Merger Plans, Back Off From FTC Challenge<\/title>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\n\n\n\n\n\t\n\t\n\t\n