Short answers, pulled from the story.
Jason Robins, Matthew Kalish, and Paul Liberman launched DraftKings in 2012 from inside Liberman's house. The trio were former employees of Vistaprint who sought to build a new kind of sports competition platform.
Major League Baseball became the first US professional league to invest in DraftKings during April 2013 though the deal remained undisclosed at the time. A two-year agreement with the National Hockey League followed in November 2014 making DraftKings the official daily fantasy partner for all NHL digital outlets.
An employee at DraftKings admitted to inadvertently releasing data before week three of NFL football games began on the 5th of October 2015. That same individual had won three hundred fifty thousand dollars on rival site FanDuel during the identical timeframe.
On the 19th of June 2017 the FTC sought a preliminary injunction arguing this concentration constituted a monopoly position threatening fair competition. The merger was officially called off following the threat of litigation from federal regulators on July 13.
The Supreme Court declared the Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act unconstitutional in May 2018 allowing states outside Nevada to legalize sports betting. DraftKings launched its first legal online sportsbook in New Jersey just three months later in August 2018.
In September 2024 the Securities and Exchange Commission fined the company two hundred thousand dollars for leaking non-public revenue data on CEO Jason Robins' social media accounts prior to official earnings releases.