Underdog is an American sports gaming company founded in 2020 in Brooklyn, New York by Jeremy Levine, Brandon Stakenborg and Trevor John, who had previously built the fantasy sports businesses StarStreet and DRAFT. It runs three products: Best Ball tournaments, Pick'em contests and a licensed sportsbook, which went live in North Carolina. That progression is the point of interest. Underdog built scale through daily fantasy formats that several state regulators have since challenged as unlicensed sports betting, and has been converting into a regulated sportsbook operator in the states where it can. It sits in the same contested territory as prediction markets and sweepstakes: products that reached large audiences through a legal classification that regulators are now revisiting.
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IG's core trading business kept more customers and less of their money in the third quarter, and the London-listed broker has cut its 2026 growth outlook to mid-single digits. The US fantasy and prediction-market operator it agreed in July to buy for up to $1.3 billion more than doubled its revenue, but that deal has not closed and the business is in court with six states.
Told by regulators in Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Mississippi, New Jersey, Ohio and Pennsylvania that it could not offer both, Underdog has chosen its CFTC-registered event contracts over the draft games that built the company. Drafts close in those states on Wednesday evening, after the NFL season kicks off.