service's co-founder Chris Fargis explained that the service was inspired by the format of online poker, and that his goal was to "take the time frame of season-long fantasy sports leagues and shrink it." The site was later acquired by NBC Universal and re-branded as SnapDraft; NBC had also acquired the fantasy sports-focused website Rotoworld in 2006. SnapDraft was later shut down. Growth On July 21, 2009, the Edinburgh, Scotland-based prediction market game Hubdub launched a spin-off known as FanDuel; the service attempted to market itself as a modern alternative to the fantasy sports services provided by other media properties, such as Yahoo! Sports and CBSSports.com, with the daily fantasy format and integration with popular social networks. Its founder, Nigel Eccles, was inspired to create the site when he realized that the carve-out for fantasy sports in the U.S. Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act of 2006 did not state that a legal, paid fantasy sports competition had to last for an entire season. In February 2012, the Boston-based DraftKings was established by former VistaPrint executives Jason Robins, Matthew Kalish, and Paul Liberman. DraftKings gained a local, Somerville-based competitor in StarStreet, when it introduced a daily fantasy game of its own. DraftKings and FanDuel in particular became the subjects of venture capital investments by various parties; in April 2013, Major League Baseball invested an undisclosed amount in DraftKings, becoming the first U.S. professional sports organization to invest in daily fantasy sports. In 2014, DraftKings acquired DraftStreet, as well as StarStreet, and raised another $41 million in investment led by the Raine Group, bringing the company to a total of $75 million in outside funding. FanDuel pursued investments as well, with an $11 million Series C funding round that included Comcast Ventures, a $70 million Series D round in September 2014 led by Shamrock Capital Advisors with participation from NBC Sports Ventures and KKR among others, and a Series E funding round of $275 million in July 2015, valuing the company at over $1 billion. In October 2014, NBC Sports entered into a content sharing partnership with the DFS information website Rotogrinders, in which it would provide daily fantasy-oriented content for Rotoworld. DraftKings and FanDuel began to pursue advertising and endorsement deals with sports franchises and leagues; in November 2014, DraftKings entered into a multi-year sponsorship deal with the National Hockey League, complementing team-level sponsorship deals it had previously reached with seven