Daily fantasy sports site FanDuel has reported its revenue numbers for the fourth quarter of 2014 and as can be expected from a site that has seen its exposure in the US market explode, FanDuel’s revenues in the last quarter of the year has skyrocketed up to $37 million, a significant improvement from its revenue numbers in the same time last year when it posted $7.4 million. For the entire year of 2014, FanDuel reported earning a total net revenue of $54 million.
The popularity of FanDuel’s daily fantasy format has even forced the company to address the challenge of the demand growing too fast, thus the need to expand its own business operations. “[FanDuel] is proving so popular that our main challenge now is meeting customer demand, we have over 125 staff split between offices in New York and Edinburgh and are planning on opening an office in Glasgow soon,” founder and CEO Nigel Eccles said, as quoted by the Herald Scotland.
The growing interest in the daily fantasy sports format in the US – it is legal there – has even given FanDuel the opportunity to leverage that popularity with partnerships with a variety of US pro sports teams, most notably in the NBA where it already has existing deals with the likes of the Houston Rockets, Minnesota Timberwolves, Philadelphia 76ers, Boston Celtics, and most recently, the Cleveland Cavaliers. Fan Duel also has a four-year deal with the NBA, which recognizes it as the league’s official daily fantasy sports provider.
FanDuel’s reach in the US is evident based on numbers. According to the company, it accounts for 80 percent of the market and its fan base has exponentially grown from having 190,000 active paying users last year to well over 1 million this year. The company has even launched an iPhone app, which has been downloaded just under 900,000 times.
FanDuel also reported $371 million in player entry fees from October-December, which accounts for 69 percent of the market. That’s more than double than the $166 million in player entry fees its closest rival, DraftKings, earned in the same period.
FanDuel’s status as the clear no.1 daily fantasy sports site in the US is something even rival DraftKings seem to have accepted. The company’s CEO, Jason Robbins, seemed to admit as much, telling the New York Business Journal his “disappointment” over not getting enough gains in shares over its rival site.
All this shows how healthy the daily fantasy sports market is in the US. It’s going to be interesting how the two sites and the rest of the other fringe players can handle losing the NFL season – by far the most popular fantasy sport – but then again, the NBA is still around. That’s good for FanDuel because it can tap into its partnership with the league to continue to drum up interest in its daily fantasy sports offerings.