By @TheDailyPayoff
For all the disruptive forces daily pay fantasy sports have caused in the professional sports scene in the past few years, the industry’s still dominant player, Fan Duel, looks like they will stick to the core that has brought them success and players in the millions, according to their CEO at the Cynopsis Sports Business Conference Tuesday in New York.
Eccles, whose company has continued to thrive in the marketplace even with the ongoing push of Boston-based DraftKings, was frank in his assessment of the formula that has brought the company success, market share and solid partners like the NBA as well as 18 NF teams for the coming 2015 season.
He declared there are really two sports that drive the revenue, and that’s where FanDuel will stay.
“When we started our business, we saw and engaged in MLB as the dominant sport in fantasy,” he said during the closing remarks at the Time Warner Center. “However,we came to realize pretty quickly that MLB, despite their efforts to try and engage with a younger audience, has not driven adoption with pay fantasy. The marketplace is dominated by the NFL and the NBA and then everyone else and that’s where we have had our great success and will continue to do so.”
Eccles said that in the past few years over 50 percent of their revenue has come from the NFL offerings the company has, followed by 30 percent of revenue from the NBA.
MLB, he added, contributed 15 percent of their business, with other sports like golf and soccer only holding five percent of their marketplace. Surprisingly he added that he does not see that formula changing at any point in the next five years, even with the continued growth of soccer on the American landscape.
“Pay fantasy appeals to a younger demo, and that demo in the United States is driven by the NFL and the NBA,” he added. “We have seen all the work that we have done with the NBA pay dividends in fan engagement for a growing audience, and that is where we will continue to spend our marketing focus, along with what we will do around the growing NFL audience. The engaged pay fantasy player has become a more engaged fan, and that has benefitted everyone.”
Eccles also pointed out that all of FanDuel’s research has shown, somewhat surprisingly, that monetary winnings was not the primary driver for their engaged fan base. Rather the biggest driver was what he dubbed “the pregame experience,” the time when fans prepared for games by gathering and engaging with content to help them make their decisions. That engagement was what has fueled Fan Duel to enhance its daily content offerings in recent months, much like DraftKings has recently. The feeling is the better the ancillary content, the more engaged fan and the more engaged fan the better chances of cultivating him or her as a regular daily pay fantasy player.
“Every aspect of our fan experience gets better the more consumers are engaged on our site,” he added. “The better the overall engagement, the more loyal the customer becomes.”
While it was pointed out that other companies, most notably DraftKings but others like Mondogoal, which has specialized in European soccer and also launched a Women’s World Cup business have sought to diversify their offerings with niche sports, Eccles was steadfast in his belief that their research shows to fish where the biggest fish are.
“We will continue to offer games for other sports, but we know what our fans want and what they will engage with regularly, and our plan is to spend our time and our efforts there. It has worked thus far and we don’t see it changing much in the near future.”
That future appears to continue to be bright, as FanDuel will offer enhanced games around their new NFL partnerships this fall while continuing to expand their relationship with the NBA, one which many thought was not as vibrant as baseball even the last few years.
Even the disruptor it appears, knows the big players when they see them, and as the saying goes, if the pay fantasy model isn’t broke, then no need to fix it.