Daily fantasy sports sites suffered their second consecutive week of declining entry fees following news of more high-level law enforcement investigations of the sector.
According to numbers crunched by SuperLobby.com, total entry fees in guaranteed prize pools (GPP) for Week 7 of the NFL season came to just under $22.7m at DraftKings, down from $22.9m in Week 6. Rival FanDuel suffered a steeper decline, falling to just under $19.1m from $19.9m in Week 6.
Multiple factors have been credited with driving the declines, including the onslaught of negative press that has engulfed the DFS industry since the DraftKings’ data-leak controversy, the subsequent decision to ban DFS employees – many of whom were among the highest volume DFS players – from playing real-money DFS, and a slightly more restrained approach to television ad spending.
Despite the decline in fees, both sites reported an increase in the total number of entries, with DraftKings rising from 3.76m to 4.02m, while FanDuel’s entries rose 100k to 3.4m. Both sites also took in more money than they paid out, which was partly due to each site having reduced their marquee contests’ guaranteed payouts for Week 7. Both sites have opted to maintain their current guarantees for Week 8 ($6m at DraftKings, $4m at FanDuel).