Who owns Underdog Fantasy? Ownership structure explained (2026)

Underdog Fantasy is one of the fastest-growing names in American sports gaming. It started as a daily fantasy sports app built around Best Ball drafts and Pick'em contests, then pushed into the fast-moving world of federally regulated sports prediction markets. By mid-2026 it was drawing millions of users and reporting net revenue near $466 million.

For most of its life the company was private, with no ticker to look up and no quarterly filing that listed its owners. Ownership traced instead to its founders, a concentrated group of venture and strategic investors, and a long roster of athlete and celebrity backers who bought in early. That changed in 2026, when Underdog was acquired by a public company.

Understanding who owns Underdog matters because the answer explains the company's aggressive strategy. A founder-led, venture-backed business under regulatory pressure had strong incentives to move fast, pivot hard, and find an exit. Underdog did all three, and the sale to IG Group is where the value ultimately flowed.

Underdog Sports, which operates the Underdog Fantasy brand, was founded in 2020 by Jeremy Levine, Brandon Stakenborg, and Trevor John. The company is headquartered in New York. Levine, a serial founder in the fantasy and gaming space, serves as chief executive and is the public face of the business.

Underdog built its early growth on daily fantasy sports. Its signature products are Best Ball, a season-long draft format that requires no in-season lineup management, and Pick'em, a game where users predict whether athletes will go over or under statistical projections. Pick'em became both the company's fastest-growing product and its biggest legal target, because critics argued it looked and behaved like a sports book.

Starting in 2025, Underdog pivoted toward prediction markets, which are regulated as financial derivatives by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission rather than as gambling by state regulators. It partnered with Crypto.com and Kalshi to offer sports event contracts, then acquired its own exchange infrastructure to run the markets directly. This mirrors the strategy that has made venues like Kalshi and Polymarket some of the most watched companies in gaming.

The scale is now substantial. For the 12 months ended June 30, 2026, Underdog reported net revenue of roughly $466 million, up about 21% year over year. That growth, valued in the IG Group deal at around $1.1 billion upfront, is the kind of figure a business valuation calculator helps put in context.

Underdog Fantasy never traded publicly on its own. For most of its history it was a private company owned by its founders, employees, and a group of venture and strategic investors, with no public float and no obligation to disclose a full cap table. What was known about its ownership came from funding announcements rather than regulatory filings.

That changed in 2026. IG Group Holdings plc, a London-listed trading and prediction-markets company, acquired Underdog for total consideration of up to about $1.3 billion. With the deal complete, Underdog is a wholly owned subsidiary of a public company, and its founders and investors converted their private stakes into cash and IG shares. The ownership question now runs one level up, to IG Group and its public shareholders.

Before the sale, Underdog was still meaningfully owned by the people who built it. Jeremy Levine, Brandon Stakenborg, and Trevor John founded the company in 2020 and retained significant equity through each funding round. Venture rounds dilute founders over time, but because Underdog raised a relatively modest total, the founding team likely held a larger combined stake than founders at companies that raised billions.

Exact founder percentages were never public. Private companies do not disclose individual ownership, and Underdog never published a cap table. What is clear is that Levine, as CEO and the largest founder voice, sat at the center of control. The IG Group deal, structured partly in cash and partly in new IG shares, converted that founder equity into a mix of proceeds and a continuing stake in the acquirer.

Underdog raised across three main rounds, moving from a celebrity-backed seed to a Silicon Valley-led unicorn round. Amounts and valuations below reflect reported figures; some, especially early valuations, were never officially disclosed.

Across these rounds Underdog raised roughly $145 million, a modest sum relative to the billions poured into rivals like DraftKings and FanDuel. That capital efficiency is part of why the company reached a $1 billion-plus valuation without heavy dilution, and part of why a single buyer could take it private.

Spark Capital was the marquee financial backer. The venture firm, known for early bets on Twitter, Slack, and Discord, led Underdog's Series C in March 2025. The round pushed Underdog past a $1.2 billion valuation and was described as one of the largest venture investments a top-tier Silicon Valley firm had made in sports gaming.

Acies Investments and BlackRock joined earlier, anchoring the 2022 Series B that valued the company at $485 million. BlackRock's participation gave the round institutional weight, though its stake was a venture position rather than the index-fund ownership the asset manager is known for at public companies.

Mark Cuban and Kevin Durant's Thirty Five Ventures were the highest-profile early backers. They anchored the 2021 celebrity round alongside a long list of athletes and musicians, including Trae Young, Odell Beckham Jr., Nas, Future, The Chainsmokers, Kygo, and Steve Aoki. These backers brought marketing reach as much as capital, helping Underdog build a brand in a crowded market. Their stakes were individually small but collectively notable, and they were cashed out in the IG Group sale.

Rather than an IPO, Underdog exited through a sale. The IG Group acquisition was the return event for its investors. IG paid an upfront enterprise value of about $1.1 billion, settled through a mix of new IG shares and roughly $380 million in cash, plus an earnout of up to about $200 million tied to Underdog's 2026 net gaming revenue and a positive 2026 EBITDA. The structure ties a chunk of the founders' and investors' payout to the business hitting its numbers after the deal closed.

Jeremy Levine is the central figure at Underdog. As founder and chief executive, he sets strategy, led fundraising, and drove the company's rapid pivot from daily fantasy sports into prediction markets. He is the largest founder voice in the business and its most public representative, frequently speaking on the legal fights over Pick'em and the shift to CFTC-regulated contracts. Under IG Group's ownership, he continues to lead Underdog as part of the acquirer's group.

Brandon Stakenborg and Trevor John co-founded Underdog with Levine in 2020 and were part of the founding equity base cashed out in the sale. As with most private startups, the founders' operational roles and individual stakes were never fully disclosed, but the founding trio retained meaningful ownership through the funding rounds.

As a venture-backed private company, Underdog's board included founder representatives and seats tied to major investors such as Spark Capital, Acies, and BlackRock. That governance shaped the company's big decisions, from fundraising to the sale itself. With the acquisition complete, Underdog now sits inside IG Group's corporate structure, and control runs through IG's board and management rather than a private venture cap table.

Underdog's Pick'em product drew regulatory fire across the country. Multiple states, including Florida, Massachusetts, New York, Arkansas, Maryland, West Virginia, and Wyoming, issued cease-and-desist letters or passed rules banning the peer-to-house parlay format, arguing it functioned as unlicensed sports betting. In several states Underdog and rivals such as PrizePicks and Betr reworked their games into peer-to-peer versions to keep operating.

In 2025, Underdog sued California Attorney General Rob Bonta to block a legal opinion declaring daily fantasy sports illegal in the state. A Sacramento County judge denied Underdog's request for an injunction in July 2025. Arizona, separately, moved to terminate Underdog's daily fantasy sports license. These actions showed how quickly the regulatory ground under the Pick'em model was shifting.

Underdog was named alongside PrizePicks and Yahoo Fantasy Sports in a Massachusetts class action filed in October 2024, alleging the operators ran illegal sports betting. A separate federal lawsuit filed in the Eastern District of New York in early 2025 alleged Underdog's Pick'em product amounted to an unlicensed sports book, since users wagered on athlete performance against odds the company set. Underdog has contested these claims.

The legal pressure on Pick'em pushed Underdog toward CFTC-regulated prediction markets, where federal oversight preempts many state gambling laws. The shift was disruptive internally. Underdog closed its lone sportsbook operation in North Carolina and laid off about 125 employees, roughly 20% of its workforce, as it restructured around the new model. The strategy reduces state regulatory risk but exposes the company to federal scrutiny and the same legal debates now surrounding prediction market operators over whether sports contracts belong under the CFTC at all.

Ownership explains why Underdog behaves the way it does. A founder-led company backed by venture capital and celebrity investors had one overriding goal: build value and find a return for shareholders. That incentive shaped every major decision, from the aggressive rollout of Pick'em to the sharp pivot into prediction markets when the legal risk grew too large. The founders and investors needed the business to keep growing toward an exit, and it did, ending in the sale to IG Group.

The concentrated ownership also made a clean sale possible. Because Underdog raised a relatively small amount and kept its cap table tight, a single acquirer could buy the whole company without navigating a sprawling base of public shareholders. That is a sharp contrast to publicly traded rivals like DraftKings, where ownership is dispersed across institutions and retail investors and no buyer can simply write one check. The private structure gave Underdog's founders and backers the flexibility to negotiate a $1.3 billion deal with IG Group on their own terms.

For IG Group, the appeal is what it bought: a fast-growing US customer base, a licensed prediction-markets stack, and roughly $466 million in annual net revenue. The earnout structure, with up to $200 million tied to 2026 performance, keeps the founders financially motivated to hit their targets even after the sale. It aligns the people who built Underdog with the buyer that now owns it, at least through the transition.

For users, the ownership shift matters less day to day but signals the direction of travel. Underdog has moved from a state-regulated fantasy operator toward a federally regulated prediction-markets business inside a larger public company. That should bring more capital and stability, but it also means the product is increasingly shaped by financial regulators and a corporate parent rather than a scrappy startup. The scrappy years, and the founders who defined them, are giving way to life inside a public company.

Underdog Fantasy is owned by IG Group Holdings plc, a London-listed trading and prediction-markets company that acquired it in 2026 for total consideration of up to about $1.3 billion. Before the sale, Underdog was a private company owned by its founders, Jeremy Levine, Brandon Stakenborg, and Trevor John, along with venture and strategic investors including Spark Capital, Acies Investments, BlackRock, Mark Cuban, and Kevin Durant's Thirty Five Ventures. Those owners were paid in a mix of cash and new IG shares.

Not on its own. Underdog was privately held and never traded on a stock exchange under its own ticker. It is now a subsidiary of IG Group, which is listed in London, so Underdog's business sits inside a public company rather than trading independently. Its former owners received a mix of cash and new IG shares in the sale.

Underdog was founded in 2020 by Jeremy Levine, Brandon Stakenborg, and Trevor John. Levine serves as the company's founder and CEO and led its strategy, including the pivot from daily fantasy sports into federally regulated prediction markets and the sale to IG Group.

Before the acquisition, the most significant financial backer was Spark Capital, which led the March 2025 Series C. Earlier institutional investors included BlackRock and Acies Investments, which anchored the 2022 Series B. High-profile individual backers included Mark Cuban and Kevin Durant through Thirty Five Ventures, alongside a roster of athletes and musicians. All of these investors were bought out when IG Group acquired the company.

Underdog raised roughly $145 million across its funding rounds, from a ~$10 million celebrity round in 2021 to a ~$100 million Series C in 2025. Its March 2025 Series C valued it at about $1.225 billion, its first unicorn valuation. The IG Group acquisition valued Underdog at roughly $1.1 billion upfront, with up to $200 million more in earnout, for total consideration of up to about $1.3 billion.

State regulators challenged Underdog's Pick'em product as unlicensed sports betting, issuing cease-and-desist orders and lawsuits across multiple states. Prediction markets are regulated federally by the CFTC, which can preempt state gambling laws. By offering CFTC-regulated sports event contracts, Underdog aimed to reduce state-level legal risk, though the move triggered layoffs and drew fresh scrutiny over whether such sports contracts belong under federal commodities rules.