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The daily fantasy hybrid website Monkey Knife Fight, founded in 2018 by Bill Asher, has been shuttered effective February 28.
Monkey Knife Fight was a daily fantasy sports (DFS) platform that offered daily contests in a range of professional sports as well as eSports leagues. It was at one time the third-largest DFS company in North America, behind FanDuel and DraftKings. PrizePicks appears to be assuming that position now as its market share continues to explode.
Unlike the traditional DFS sites that came into existence with DraftKings and FanDuel, Monkey Knife Fight focused on player-specific contests like “More or Less” where users predict whether a player’s performance will be more or less than a certain predicted statistic.
Other games included "Rapid Fire", where users picked a winner in two matchup categories.
The Bally's Corporation acquired Monkey Knife Fight with $90 million in stock less almost exactly two years ago.
“There were attempts to sell and salvage the Monkey Knife Fight business, which still maintains a passionate user base,” said Lloyd Danzig, Managing Partner at Sharp Alpha Advisors. “But, today’s announcement suggests that burn rate had grown too high for the platform to sustain operations without further infusions from Ballys.”
Bally's will also be abandoning its betting tech platform Bet.Works, acquired by the company for $125 million.
“We’re not going to make the same mistakes we made previously, so we’re looking at all adoptions to [grow] in the most profitable way,” newly appointed CEO Robeson Reeves said. “On sports, we recognize that the Bet.Works acquisition did not give us the platform required to develop a competitive product. We didn’t react fast enough there, and this will not happen again.”
Reeves referred to the Monkey Knife Fight acquisition as "a mistake".
Bally's reported major 2022 losses in its interactive division just last week.
- Aaron Goldstein, Gambling911.com
