Things are going from bad to worse for the once red hot daily fantasy sports business. This week’s bad news comes out of FanDuel’s Orlando, Florida office where 55 employees just got served with pink slips.
The lay offs, which seemed sort of inevitable, hit a group of what the company described as, “developers who were focused on R&D.”
According to a report in the Orlando Sun, the newly unemployed employees were all working on new game development.Given the daily fantasy sports’ myriad of legal problems and challenges, it’s not too surprising to hear that FanDuel is cooling it off on the development side.
There is an unfortunate twist to this story that might tug at the heart strings of even the most grizzled gambling industry veteran. According to several published reports, at least 38 of the sacked employees had only recently been hired away from Zynga (the once mighty social gaming company that’s seen its fair share of lay offs, too).
In an effort to help the unlucky 55 move on with their lives, FanDuel has offered up a fairly generous severance package. Each of the former employees will be handed a check for two months worth of salary and some sort of assistance in finding new jobs.
Despite the nonstop barrage of bad news, FanDuel says that it’s still committed to developing its customer service operations in the Orlando area.
While that may well be the case, FanDuel will be building out that operation with a fairly limited staff. As of this writing, only about 22 employees remain at the company’s Orlano office.