FanDuel is in soccer.
No, we’re not talking about a new promotion with Major League Soccer. Nor is the sports gambling company jumping on the front of the shirt of any professional team any time soon.
Instead, you can find them playing on the fields of Randalls Island in the lower divisions of United States Soccer.
Meet FanDuel FC, a first-year team playing in the Cosmopolitan Soccer League here in New York City. Competing in what could be described as either the eighth or ninth tier of US Soccer, FDFC is composed entirely of employees of FanDuel’s main office in Manhattan.
Not only that, the team is actually pretty good. They wrapped their first season last month winning silverware and earning promotion in the CSL.
Team captain and founder Billy Cundall spoke to Hudson River Blue about the experience.
“It's been amazing, from this time last year, I kind of wouldn't have imagined it to have gone any better if I'm being honest,” he said. “When we first kind of looked at getting together and having an eleven-a-side team, it was a little bit of a pipe dream, and it all escalated quite quickly, so to have done so well in the first year is incredible and yeah, I'm really proud of the lads and the achievement that we've managed to do.”
Gambling on a new idea
It isn’t odd to see companies encourage employees to hang out after work. But instead of organizing a bowling group or going for early-evening drinks, one employee at the FanDuel office in the Flatiron district had a slightly different idea.
Cundall joined FanDuel in 2023, jumping across the ocean from his home of Leeds in the United Kingdom. By day he works as a Acquisition Strategy Senior Manager at the company. In short, he tries to attract new customers to FanDuel’s platform in fantasy sports and racing.
Cundall has a background in soccer. He played in college here in the United States and previously in England with his former employer, so the idea to start kicking a ball around with colleagues came pretty naturally.
“FanDuel really supports their employees to be able to kind of go out of those extracurricular activities, which resonate really well in the workplace,” Cundall explained to Hudson River Blue in an interview last month. “Initially that's kind of how it came about… I used to play company/corporate soccer, whether it be five-a-side, seven-a-side. So when I came over here, I thought it would be a really great way to network and kind of get myself out there to different people across the company.”
Cundall also gives plenty of credit to FanDuel itself, which is supportive of both the venture and helping him transition from overseas. The organization released a statement to Hudson River Blue congratulating the group on its early success.
“FanDuel is proud to support our championship-winning soccer team, FanDuel FC,” the statement read. “We encourage our employees to pursue their passions at FanDuel outside the office. Watching the FanDuel FC team come together and flourish this year has been an honor, and we are proud to support them!”
At first, Cundall started a small pickup group in Brooklyn for employees of FanDuel. Over time, he started to see more and more people show up — people with abilities that he and others from the company realized might be better suited to a higher level.
“Over the course of a few different Saturdays when we were playing and discussed the, again, the pipe dream of potentially running an 11-a-side team, and from there I thought we'd just give it a go,” he explained.
Every member of the team sort of knew that this wasn’t something that could be started spur of the moment. There was always going to be a major difference between playing kickaround on weekends and committing to a full-fledged outdoor season, mostly through the harsh NYC winters in places like Randall’s Island.
“It's a difficult thing to get that commitment and the buy-in from a company team, as obviously you're spending a lot of your time working for the company,” Cundall said. But from his point of view, FanDuel was already bringing in the type of sports-focused people that could make that sort of teamwork. “It just kind of exemplifies how good of a place it is to work and on top of that, how good the employees, how brilliant the employees are. The fact that we all want to spend time with each other on the weekends as well, which is a positive thing. I think that the camaraderie and the way that the squad gets along is a major proponent of why everybody wants to get involved and, and commit to it.”
After more discussions and commitments, Cundall and Co approached the leadership of New York City’s oldest, ongoing soccer league, namely the Cosmopolitan Soccer League. The two sides discussed the possibility of fielding a company team and eventually FanDuel FC was officially born and set to kickoff in the Fall of 2024.
Promotion in their first season
Heading into the 2024-25 season, there wasn’t much telling what was going to happen.
The Cosmopolitan Soccer League is historic, but the lower divisions can be described as the Wild West in terms of quality. Separated into four divisions with promotion and relegation, the lowest tier is a mix of reserve teams for clubs higher in the pyramid, or groups of friends, or branches of actually well-known soccer organizations.
Heck, you can ask Hudson River Blue’s very own John Baney, who was part of multiple promotions in the CSL with Vibes FC, which started playing just a few years ago. (Baney scored four nice goals this season, btw.)
No one, not even Cundall, knew what to expect.
After a preseason friendly against Barnstonworth Rovers FC, a team FDFC would come to see as a rival, they played their first regulation game against FC Partizani NY in early September. FanDuel won that match 7-1, then went on to win four of its first six games and by mid-October.
Cundall said that's when something changed. “We started to really get a style of play and a philosophy that was kind of instilled with the squad. That was when we kind of looked around and noticed that we were capable of doing something really incredible,” Cundall said.
After falling toQueens Tigers FC, a team that would be neck and neck with FanDuel for the rest of the season, the company team didn’t lose another match. FanDuel went on a 14-game unbeaten streak, with 12 wins and just two draws.
FanDuel’s biggest strength came from its defense. After trialing multiple formations, the group eventually settled on a back-five. That decision was completely insane in the sphere of no-defense/all-offense lower-division soccer.
But it worked. FanDuel only allowed 14 goals through the entire 20-game season that ran into May. To put that in context, the team only had three games where the opposition scored two goals — and FDFC still won two of those.
“In preseason we trialed two or three different formations and that was kind of the one that suited our personnel the most, so we thought that we'd build from the back, ensure that we had solid foundations before we did anything crazy going forwards,” he explained. “I think that that period of playing five at the back was super important to building those foundations to where we got to at the back end of the season.”
The offense wasn’t too shabby, either. Forward and Senior Analyst Eric Gooden scored 12 goals and led FanDuel in that stat category, followed by senior manager Tom Lodge with nine and Cundall himself with seven. Cundall regularly wore the captain's armband while playing in the midfield and could see the team’s confidence growing with each match.
When the team beat Manhattan FC III on May 3, it secured the regular season championship and automatic promotion to Division 3.
A brief history of company teams in New York City
A company club like FanDuel is an anomaly in the year 2025, at least in New York City. But they’re part of a long and proud history of employees fielding soccer teams in the Five Boroughs and beyond.
In 1884, when the American Football Association became the first attempt at organizing a soccer governing body in the country, many of its early teams were company teams from New York and New Jersey. The first national champions in 1884–85, playing for the “American Cup,” were Clark O.N.T. (Clark Our New Thread) representing the Clark Thread Company in East Newark, NJ.
The National Association Football League, one of the first attempts at a major semi-professional league in the early 1900s, eventually included a handful of company teams. For example, look at Brooklyn Morse Dry Dock, and Kearny Federal Ship Athletic Association Soccer Club. There was even New York IRT, representing the workers of the then decade-old subway company that would eventually merge into what is today the MTA.
But one team stood above them all.
Brooklyn Robins Dry Dock was the second-ever New York City team to win the US Open Cup, (then known as the National Challenge Cup), in 1920–21. The team, composed of workers from the Robins Dry Dock and Repair Company in Red Hook, Brooklyn, took the title after winning five games, including the final in front of 8,000 fans in Fall River, MA.
Joshua Duder
Elsewhere in the USOC history, Bethlehem Steel FC, representing the legendary steel works of the same name from central Pennsylvania, still holds the record for most tournament titles with five.
The idea of serious company teams, either composed of actual workers or just teams being sponsored by large organizations and bringing in high-quality players, fell out of fashion as the 20th century rolled on.
In the US, it's rare to see a company team outside of small-scale pickup games. It's not much better in Europe, where massive clubs like Manchester United and Juventus can trace their histories back to companies but have since become massive professional entities unto themselves. A handful of current examples still exist, with clubs such as Bayer 04 Leverkusen (Bayer pharmaceuticals) and VfL Wolfsburg (Volkswagen).
The employees who put on the FanDuel FC shirts don’t do it to continue the legacy of company teams. But Cundall does realize what it means to continue a historic tradition.
“From our perspective, we have multiple nationalities that play. To be able to have that diversity with our own team is something that we're really proud of. We understand that it's kind of like a main pillar [of US Soccer history], the fact that company teams have kind of helped to build these amateur leagues. We're just proud to continue that long-standing tradition and hopefully more companies can do the same.”
Cundall has said he hasn’t looked past FanDuel FC taking part in the Open Cup Qualifying rounds sometime in the near future.
The future for FanDuel
It’s unclear what lies ahead for FanDuel FC. After winning the title, the team didn’t need to take part in the divisional playoffs these last few weeks. That tournament was won by Barnstonworth Rovers, who defeated Queens Tigers to advance to Division 3.
For Cundall, he and the group want to take it step by step.
“We're just gonna go into Division 3, see what the standards are like, and compete as best we can,” the captain said. “Something that we regularly say is, you know, the sky's the limit, and if we keep pulling for each other, then anything can happen.”
Division 3 in the CSL isn’t a legends row, but it is where competition begins to pick up. Something above screwing around but below the serious jump of Division 2, where teams are required to field both a first and reserve team.
The competition next year will include reserve teams for organizations in the American Premier Soccer League, such as defending National Amateur Cup champion New York Pancyprian Freedoms, as well as the recently relegated SC Eintracht - winner of the 1955 National Challenge Cup (US Open Cup).
Even with this move upwards, Cundall doesn’t think much is going to change. There have been jokes about how a Division 4 league championship means a jump to the USL or MLS is right around the corner. But overall, the man from Leeds is hopeful the group can keep its raw essence that worked so well in the debut season.
That even means keeping well-performing players, even if they get offers from other teams.
“We're such a tightly knit group - that really works in our favor. If Thomas Lodge (nine goals, five assists) were to leave, I'd never let him forget it in the office as I see him every single day. So I don't think there's any danger of that,” Cundall jokes.
The team will have the next few months to consider what changes, if any, to make. That might come at the next FanDuel board meeting. Probably with a Cosmopolitan Soccer League trophy sitting near their desks.
“Hopefully we can keep the spine of the team together and see what happens in the future season.”
