Originally, both DraftKings and FanDuel started by hosting daily fantasy sports contests, but after the passage of the PASPA bill, they quickly entered the sports betting market, capturing over 70% of the market share, leaving traditional casino brands like Caesars and MGM far behind.
They achieved this by seizing the competitive edge in technology and customer acquisition, then heavily investing in marketing, broadcasting a large number of advertisements, and offering huge promotions for new customers.
DraftKings CEO and co-founder Jason Robins participated in the fireside chat at the Craig-Hallum online gaming conference.
In this virtual event, he discussed various topics, including the possibility of enhancing iGaming legislation by 2025.
Host Ryan Sigdahl asked:
Think about your largest peers in the US, like Flutter and Entain, who have international operations and have been around for a long time, and have already pushed these products into the US market. You are born or bred in the US, and you have crafted this product for the US market, but could you compare and consider, given what they have, do you think this is an advantage or a potential disadvantage?
Jason Robins responded:
I think initially it was a bit of both, because obviously, having a presence and focus here, a customer base, all these things, a brand, all of that helps a lot. Initially, we were behind in product and technology until we acquired SBTech and invested a lot of effort in the past few years, and now we feel that we are indeed at a market-leading position in terms of technology and product capabilities.
So, I think over time, you will see that this will become increasingly advantageous, as the areas where we were initially behind, we have been able to quickly close the gap. Now, in some cases, we are actually ahead of most of our competitors in the market.
For example, you start this conversation by asking me about the NFL results. If you have a lot of market primarily betting on football and other sports, then the impact of NFL results on the business will be lessened. This is not a long-term issue, as it should stabilize over time, but diversifying across different sports and regions is beneficial.
So, we believe that over time, we will have our own room for growth. But I do think that what you see now is that our focused advantage is combining with the now narrowing gap and starting to pull away from most competitors in many categories of sports and casino products.
Ryan Sigdahl:
One last question, Jason, as we head into 2025, what are you excited about?
Jason Robins:
I think 2025 will be another huge year of growth. All signs point to this. Obviously, I am very excited about the state legislation aspect.
2024 is an election year. In election years, it's always hard to pass gambling bills. I think the upcoming 2025 will gain some real momentum, and it might even be possible to get some iGaming bills passed smoothly, which should be great. So, these are some of the things I am very excited about in terms of our product plans.
We have an incredible product roadmap, and I think you will really start to see us make significant progress in live betting and continue to push for overall speed improvements. So, we think there are a lot of benefits there, and a big year is coming up.
