Underdog Brings Crash Games To Daily Fantasy Sports
Underdog's new offering, Crash, allows people to project how long an individual at-bat will last in a Major League Baseball game
Crash has made it to the big leagues.
No, not Crash Davis, the career minor league catcher played by Kevin Costner in Bull Durham.
This “crash” is a little less … world weary.
Underdog has launched Crash, a new daily fantasy sports entry in which players project how many pitches a batter’s at-bat will last, and then decide when to cash out before the plate appearance ends.
The gameplay is simple enough: You select a matchup that is about to happen, say Bobby Witt Jr. is about to enter the batter’s box to take on Dylan Cease. You can even join in the middle of an at-bat.
And once you do, the action starts, as each pitch that doesn’t end the at-bat grows the multiplier. To win money, you would cash out in between pitches. The time between pitches obviously varies.
The multiplier grows with each pitch, but so does the risk of crashing out.
How does one lose money in this scenario? If the at-bat ends and you haven’t cashed out, you lose. Crash.
While this style of play is reminiscent and similar to arcade-style crash games, there is at least a modicum of strategy to Underdog’s offering.
Pitchers with high swinging strike rates and high walk rates going up against batters with a similar profile clearly would lend themselves to potentially having a few more pitches in an at-bat than a soft-tossing strike-thrower going up against a high-contact hitter, for instance.
Sold
It’s been a busy summer for Underdog, most notably by the fact the company itself was sold to IG Group in late July for $1.3 billion, though depending on Underdog’s performance, the price could skyrocket.
A big reason for the sale, as stated in the press release, was IG Group’s desire to get into the prediction market gold rush in America, as Underdog has blossomed as an early leader in the sports event contract space.
While the sale was greeted stateside as another marker for the rise of prediction markets, the street was less thrilled, as IG Group’s shares on the London Stock Exchange have fallen nearly 20% since the announcement.
Jeff Edelstein is a longtime columnist, reporter, radio host, and fantasy sports aficionado, not necessarily in that order. He lives in New Jersey with his family.
