Sling TV said it has launched the DraftKings Basketball channel, offering subscribers real-time scores and betting odds, with future plans for other channels focused on baseball and hockey. 

The launch is part of an earlier agreement between Sling TV’s parent Dish Network and DraftKings to bring the sports betting giant’s sportsbook and daily fantasy information across the satellite TV giant’s brands. 

"This new channel is just the beginning of how we plan to bring the DraftKings sports betting experience to Sling TV customers," Sling TV president Michael Schwimmer said in a press release. "We will continue expanding and enhancing our offerings to be the ultimate entertainment experience for sports fans."

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Sling TV will also launch DraftKings Baseball and DraftKings Hockey channels in the coming weeks.

"DraftKings continually looks at new ways to reach customers through innovative collaborations with recognizable brands such as Sling TV," DraftKings president of product and technology Paul Liberman said in a press release. "We are thrilled to expand this relationship, which will offer Sling TV customers an entirely new viewership experience through this first-of-its-kind streaming service."

ESPN says it launched a new ESPN Fantasy Baseball app designed to make playing faster and easier. The app is available for free for IOS and Android mobile devices.

Fans can use the app to create leagues, create teams, draft, trade and manage multiple team roster with a swipe across the stream.

The app also delivers live scores, team alerts, news, columns and video from ESPN’s fantasy baseball analysts.

Read more at B&C. 

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TV made a big contribution to the growth of daily fantasy sports over the past three years, the Video Advertising Bureau said.

Daily fantasy sports companies, led by DraftKings and FanDuel, spent $300 million on TV advertising over the last three years and have built themselves into households names and substantial business, VAB said.

The fantasy sports business now is under pressure as state authorities question whether or not it is a form of illegal gambling. Some states have threatened to close the sites to their residents, and a leading payment handler plans to stop doing business with the industry at the end of the month.

But some in the business are predicting that while the legal challenges have people nervous, they might return to their free-spending ways.

Between August and November alone, as the NFL football season started, DraftKings spent $123.4 million on national TV ads, according to iSpot.tv. FanDuel spent $136.5 million. Spending tailed off after that with DraftKings spending $3.1 million and FanDuel just $1.1 million.

Read more at broadcastingcable.com.

Just four months after attracting a $70 million round of financing from a handful of media investors, including NBC Sports Ventures and Shamrock Capital Advisors, fantasy sports startup FanDuel more than quadrupled its revenue in the fourth quarter, reporting sales of $36.8 million.

Privately held FanDuel announced the quarterly financials on its website. Founded in 2009, the fantasy sports league site has grown annual revenue from $1.2 million in 2011 to $57.3 million in 2014.

The fourth quarter performance was four times the $8.8 million in revenue FanDuel generated in the third quarter and five times the $7.4 million it generated in the fourth quarter of 2013.

FanDuel also nearly doubled its number of "paid actives" (its paid user base) in the quarter to 1.01 million from 519,310 in the third quarter.  

FanDuel claims to control about 80% of the daily fantasy sports market, which it valued at about $4 billion. Along with its chief competitor – private equity-backed DraftKings – the companies allow customers to compete in daily or weekly tournaments, instead of the season-long leagues normally associated with the genre. Players compete for cash prizes. In the fourth quarter, FanDuel said it awarded $333.9 million in prizes and says it has paid out about $600 million in prizes to date.   

Comcast Ventures, the venture capital arm of Comcast, was one of FanDuel’s first investors, as part of a group that included Pentech Ventures and Bullpen Capital, which pumped $11 million into the company in 2013.

In September, a group of existing and additional investors, including NBC Sports Ventures, Shamrock Capital Advisors (the investment arm of the Roy E. Disey family) and venture capital legend Kohlberg Kravis Roberts, invested a total of $70 million in the company.

Fantasy leagues are gaining in popularity, especially single-day and weekly sites that more resemble gambling. FanDuel got an added boost in November when it reached a four-year deal with the National Basketball Association to be the only daily fantasy site on the NBA website. The NBA also is an investor in FanDuel.

While Comcast was in on the ground floor with FanDuel, other cable properties have been eyeing the sector, including ESPN. According to a report in Sports Business Journal earlier this month, ESPN is weighing a move into the segment as early as next football season.

DirecTV, with its exclusive National Football League package NFL Sunday Ticket, also is reportedly looking into a possible partnership and launched a Fantasy Sports channel (DirecTV Fantasy Zone) in 2014.