Whatever doesn’t kill you
DraftKings thrives on competition, says CEO
Jason Robins says pressure to perform drives his company on.
In +More: Accel completes Fairmount acquisition.
Rush Street makes its excuses over Brazilian no-show.
A look at the download data in the NFL season to date.
Growth company focus is gaming affiliate Bigwinboard.
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Will to power
Nietzsche, dude: DraftKings performs best when it is “under some sort of pressure” from competitors old or new, said CEO Jason Robins, who suggested the company remained confident it could maintain its place at the top of the market regardless of any new entrants into the space.
“We’ve now seen multiple waves of competitors,” he said during the Craig-Hallum annual gaming conference. “No one has been able yet to make a dent in the top two of the market.”
He added that while it was “easy to get complacent,” he felt DraftKings “always does better under some sort of pressure.”
The DraftKings edge: Robins said there was "always the potential for disruption” if a company takes its eye off the ball. But he added that “having that edge, having the ability to always point to somebody that’s coming after us has been helpful.”
Time for a rethink: He said those currently chasing the market leaders would soon enough have to reassess how they maintained their market positioning in a more efficient way.
As the market evolved, he said a lot of companies “that are losing money now… will have to figure out how to survive at smaller levels of scale.”
They would be operating at a “disadvantage for sure,” but if they were profitable, then they would be able to “continue to keep going.”
“I kind of see more consolidation in share at the top, but I also don’t see a complete disappearance of the long-tail competitors either.”
You just haven’t earned it yet, baby: Robins added that with most competitors now they “can’t come grab a bunch” of market share “out of the gate," the “smarter” ones will realize they have to “grind it out,” build a product and “try to earn it over time.”
A nice little company you’ve got there: “It doesn't mean you can’t build a nice little company on a few percent share finding a niche in the market.”
Point of difference: Following the acquisition of SportsIQ and micro-betting specialist Simplebet, Robins pinpointed in-play as an area where DraftKings would be able to leverage its own in-house strengths.
“With in-game, we think we have the best offering as it stands today in the market,” he added. “So we want to make it a differentiation point.”
While in-play may not be great for hold, per se, Robins said it brought other benefits in terms of being accretive to spend per customer and LTV.
Hold is “just one metric” for the successful monetization of a player, he noted.
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+More
Accel Entertainment said it has closed on the previously announced $35m all-shares acquisition of Fairmount Park, which runs the FanDuel Sportsbook & Racetrack in Collinsville, Illinois.
Accel noted the “strategic transaction” added a promising single-site racetrack and future casino to extend the company’s convenience gaming expertise.
Loto-Québec plans to invest C$150m ($107m) in an expansion project at its Casino de Montréal in Parc Jean-Drapeau. The expansion is expected to include a 200-room luxury hotel with restaurants, a spa and a pool.
Australia’s Star Entertainment will receive the first A$100m ($64.4m) tranche of its new credit facility on December 9 after satisfying its conditions. The second A$100m will be made available once it satisfies another set of conditions laid out in its credit facility agreement.
888Africa has launched in Malawi, the company’s seventh launch into an African market.
Not rushing in
The first shall be last: Asked during another session of the Craig-Hallum conference about the upcoming launch of the regulated market in Brazil, Rush Street CEO Richard Schwartz said there were challenges that explained why the company was not going to be among the first tranche of licensees.
“Ultimately, we expect to be there but not in January,” he added. “If you launch in January, you’re not first, you are last because there has been a gray market for many years."
Outside of Brazil, he noted that other markets in LatAm were relatively low-cost market entries.
Competitive set: Schwartz said RSI continued to gain market share in Colombia from market leader BetPlay. “We’ve been growing share consistently, to the point where we are #2 in the market,” he said.
In Mexico, he noted that when RSI launched, Caliente had 80% share but there were now a “handful of brands” competing successfully. “We’re easily top 10,” he added.
Schwartz said, generally, LatAm was a “unique asset” for RSI. “We don’t have to wait around for the next iCasino opportunity in the US.”
Phoning it in
Show, don’t tell: Also speaking at the Craig-Hallum conference, Mike Slade, a senior adviser at Genius Sports, talked about how the company was building AI-based, computer vision and personalization tools and products for “hardcore, young, fun, dialed in” sports fans.
He noted of the BetVision product that there “wasn't some giant market research study” conducted to come up with the product but rather it was “more intuitive.”
“We act more like a software company than a gambling company,” he added.
Video assistance: Slade spoke about what Genius is also working on with the English Premier League, using networked iPhones at the stadium to give access to a “tremendous amount of information at a level of granularity that has never really been done before.”
“Because we use iPhones to do it, we don’t have to build this gigantic network that crashes,” he added.
VAR? Blame Genius: Talking of the EPL and VAR, Slade said the idea for automated offside “came from” the company’s Second Spectrum unit.
But how to “put it together and integrate it” came from Genius, which already partners with the EPL.
Earnings in brief
Intralot: The lottery and sports-betting provider/operator saw revenues decline 6% YoY to €264m in the nine months to September due, the company said, to FX moves in Argentina as well as the lack of large lottery jackpots in the US. EBITDA for the nine months was down 9% to €91.5m.
Download shares
Dropped pass: The download comps for week 13 of the NFL season showed the extent to which ESPN Bet boosted numbers in the early weeks of its launch this time last year, with total downloads down 9% YoY.
But ex-ESPN Bet, the rest of the market was up 24% led by the market leaders Flutter (with FanDuel and PokerStars), up 21% YoY, and DraftKings (including Golden Nugget) 18% ahead.
In comparison, Penn’s brands (including Hollywood Casino and theScore, as well as ESPN Bet) were down 82% YoY.
In the season to date the download picture reflects the general market share picture, albeit with the top two under-indexing on downloads. Penn is down at 6% share, which slightly over-indexes vs. its current market share of ~2%.
Venture capital firm Yolo Investments manages in excess of €500m in capital across 100 exciting fintech, gaming and blockchain companies. The Yolo Investments' Gaming fund, regulated by the Guernsey Financial Services Commission, has taken positions in fast-growth suppliers and operators, including Dabble and Enteractive. Yolo Investments (yolo.io) wants to hear from readers of this newsletter. Get in touch with your pitch, or for a chat about innovative products which can plug into our investment ecosystem.
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Growth company news
The crypto-based betting exchange BetDEX has launched a brokerage service for high-value clients. CEO Varun Sudhaker said the company “always knew” it would open up a brokerage at some point.
“But the proactive customer interest here put this on the roadmap much sooner than expected,” he told E+M’s sister publication The Token Word today.
The Czech-based fantasy stock exchange Sport Exchange Market has announced it has entered a partnership with Stats Perform for match and result data to deliver a “frictionless” trading experience.
What we’re reading: Outlier Evan Kirkham talks to CasinoReports about pivoting from social sports talk app to betting analytics.
Growth company focus – Bigwinboard
Who are you? Based in Sweden, Bigwinboard was established “around 2016” by Daniel Sokcic. “After a year of streaming my gambling sessions on Twitch, I had become a bit worn out and wanted to try something else, so I set up a little blog to write about slots,” he says.
What's the big idea? Bigwinboard is “first and foremost” an online slots reviewing site, with a global community of “thousands of members,” says Sokcic.
“I noticed there were no sites out there that published honest slot reviews, they were all generic affiliate sites with sales pitch reviews that were really just SEO articles,” he adds.
“Bingwinboard isn’t your traditional affiliate site. We’re very careful about which brands we push and how we present ourselves.”
“Honesty is key and our credibility and reputation is extremely important. Our community holds us to a very high standard.”
Funding backgrounder? Bigwinboard is fully independent. “As an unbiased slot reviewing site, it is important that we do not in any way rely on income from game providers… Our profit comes solely from casino affiliation and YouTube ads,” says Sokcic.
“Having said that, we are open to taking on board an investor as that would be an opportunity to scale up.”
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Calendar
Dec 4: Vixio Global Regulatory Awards, London
Jan 20-23: iGB Affiliate, Barcelona
Jan 20-22: ICE, Barcelona
Feb 23-25: SIGMA, Eurasia Summit, Dubai
Feb 25-27: SBC Summit, Rio de Janeiro
Mar 12-13: Next: NYC 25, New York
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