DraftKings, the daily fantasy sports and sports betting company, abruptly shut down a program called Reignmakers on Tuesday, posting a notice on its website and associated app and sending out an email blast to some subset of its user base. Reignmakers, which the company launched in 2021, offered pay-to-play contests in NFL football, PGA Tour golf, and UFC mixed martial arts. The decision to wipe the entire program, says DraftKings, was not made lightly, but was forced “due to recent legal developments.”
DraftKings has not yet specified what “recent legal developments” are troubling its now dead Reignmakers product. The company was sued in U.S. District Court in 2023 by a Reignmakers player named Justin Dufoe, who accuses the company of dealing in unregistered securities, of taking advantage of relatively unsophisticated “retail investors,” and of failing to market and support Reignmakers to the degree necessary to return to its…
