DraftKings Inc. (DraftKings) operates as a digital sports entertainment and gaming company.
The company provides users with online and retail sports betting (together, ‘Sportsbook’), online casino (‘iGaming’), and daily fantasy sports (‘DFS’) product offerings, as well as digital lottery courier, media, and other product offerings.
The company continues to make deliberate and substantial investments in support of its mission and long-term growth. For example, the company has invested in its pr...
DraftKings Inc. (DraftKings) operates as a digital sports entertainment and gaming company.
The company provides users with online and retail sports betting (together, ‘Sportsbook’), online casino (‘iGaming’), and daily fantasy sports (‘DFS’) product offerings, as well as digital lottery courier, media, and other product offerings.
The company continues to make deliberate and substantial investments in support of its mission and long-term growth. For example, the company has invested in its product offerings and technology in order to continuously launch new product innovations; improve marketing, merchandising, and operational efficiency through data science; and deliver a great user experience. The company also makes significant investments in sales and marketing, and incentives to grow and retain its paid user base, including personalized cross-product offers and promotions, and promote brand awareness to attract the ‘skin-in-the-game’ sports fan. Together, these investments have enabled the company to create a leading product built on scalable technology, while attracting a user base that has resulted in the rapid growth of its business.
The company’s priorities are to continue to invest in its product offerings, launch its product offerings in new jurisdictions, create replicable and predictable state-level unit economics in sports betting and iGaming, and expand its product offerings. When it launches Sportsbook and iGaming product offerings in a new jurisdiction, it invests heavily in user acquisition, retention, and cross-selling until the new jurisdiction provides a critical mass of users engaged across its product offerings.
The company’s path to profitability on an annual basis is based on the acceleration of positive contribution profit growth driven by increased revenue and gross profit generation from ongoing efficient customer acquisition enabled by the transition from local to regional to national advertising, strong customer retention, improved monetization from frequency and higher hold percentage, as well as scale benefits from investments in its product offerings and technology, and general and administrative functions.
Product Offerings
The company’s revenues are predominantly generated through two product offerings — Sportsbook and iGaming. These two product offerings accounted for 93% of DraftKings’ revenues for the fiscal year ended December 31, 2024. In addition to its two primary product offerings, it also offers DFS, digital lottery courier, and advertising and sponsorship packages to targeted advertisers across its DFS product offering, free games, and media content.
Below is a description of each of the company’s significant product offerings and services:
Sportsbook - Sportsbook engages consumers in their sports viewing experience. Sports betting involves a user placing a bet by wagering money on an event at fixed odds (‘proposition’) determined by DraftKings. In the event the user wins, DraftKings pays out the bet. The company’s Sportsbook revenue is generated by setting odds that are intended to provide a built-in theoretical margin for each proposition offered to its users.
iGaming - iGaming, or online casino, product offerings typically include the full suite of games available in land-based casinos, such as blackjack, roulette, baccarat, and slot machines. For these product offerings, the company functions similarly to land-based casinos, generating revenue through hold, or gross winnings, as users play against the house.
The company’s iGaming product offering consists of a combination of games that it has built in-house and licensed content from suppliers, such as International Gaming Technology, iForium, Light & Wonder Inc., Spin, and Evolution for live dealer services. The latter are subject to standard revenue-sharing agreements specific to each supplier, whereby the supplier receives a percentage of the company’s gaming revenue generated from their respective casino games played utilizing its technology. In exchange, DraftKings receives a limited license to offer the games to users in jurisdictions where use is approved by regulatory authorities. Revenue generated through its self-developed major casino games, such as blackjack, results in higher retained revenue by DraftKings.
Daily Fantasy Sports - Since its launch, the company has monetized its DFS product offering by facilitating peer-to-peer play, whereby contestants compete against each other for prize money. It provides contestants with technology that establishes DFS contests, scores the contests, distributes the prizes, and performs other administrative activities to enable the ‘skin-in-the-game’ sports fan experience. The company’s revenue from DFS consists of the difference between the entry fees collected and the amounts paid out to contestants as prizes in a period.
Digital Lottery Courier - The company’s digital lottery courier product offering facilitates the purchase of official state lottery tickets on behalf of customers through a mobile application or website. Revenue is earned primarily from service fees for processing and fulfilling ticket orders, along with commissions earned from state lotteries on ticket sales and certain winning tickets, where applicable. Revenue is not recognized from the face value of lottery tickets or customer prize winnings, as the service acts solely as a courier and assumes no risk from game outcomes.
Media, Advertising, and Sponsorship - The company’s advertising packages range from standard ad placements and background ad placements to more high-touch integrations, such as sponsored DFS contest series or custom site takeovers. These are typically served and tracked by a range of advertising methods that have been built directly into its product offerings and feature partnerships with brand categories ranging from entertainment to food to automotive. Each advertising package is bespoke, and the company offers each client a custom ‘menu’ of advertising options, which include online media (such as display, video, and audio advertisements and page and ‘skin’ sponsorship takeovers), custom content, including branded video content, live events, such as sponsored watch parties, and sponsored free or paid games, including daily fantasy, pick’em, and bracket games. Each advertising package has a different pricing model, with a variety of factors affecting the pricing of a particular package, including, but not limited to, the sport to which the package relates, and the demand for, and supply of, the individual package components. Sponsorships and custom-built games and content typically have fixed fee pricing. Other packages, such as custom-branded video content or online advertisements, are sold with a guaranteed number of impressions, which are priced per a certain number of guaranteed impressions. Each time a consumer sees an advertisement while playing, watching, reading, or listening to a piece of content or playing a game, an impression is counted.
DraftKings Marketplace - The company launched DraftKings Marketplace (‘Marketplace’) during the third quarter of 2021. Marketplace was an NFT ecosystem designed for mainstream accessibility that offered curated initial NFT drops (‘Primary Sales’) and allowed owners of NFTs on Marketplace to list their NFTs for sale to other Marketplace customers (‘Secondary Sales’). Once marked for sale with a chosen selling price, the NFT appeared on the Marketplace secondary market. Customers could browse all available NFTs within the secondary market and could opt to purchase based on the selling price. The revenue it earned on Primary Sales and Secondary Sales was based on a specific percentage of the gross value of each such sale. The company also offered NFT-based DFS-style contests through its Reignmakers franchise. The Marketplace and Reignmakers franchise product offerings were discontinued in the third quarter of 2024.
Reducing the revenues attributable to its Sportsbook, iGaming, DFS, digital lottery courier, and Marketplace product offerings is the portion of gross revenue that the company allocates to new and existing user incentives and promotions, which are awarded as a result of gameplay or at its discretion, through loyalty programs, free plays, deposit bonuses, discounts, rebates, or other rewards and incentives.
Seasonality
The company’s business experiences seasonality primarily based on the relative popularity of certain sports. Although sporting events occur throughout the year (for the year ended December 31, 2024), its users are typically most active in the fourth quarter due to the overlapping calendars of the NFL and NBA seasons, which are the most popular sports on its Sportsbook product offering.
Marketing
User Acquisition and Retention - The company’s ability to effectively market is paramount to its operational success. Utilizing a blend of analytics and data science as its foundation, it leverages its marketing to acquire, retain, and reactivate users while building a trusted consumer-facing brand. It uses a variety of free and paid marketing channels, in combination with compelling offers and exciting product innovations, to achieve its objectives. Furthermore, the company optimizes its marketing spend using data collected since the beginning of its operations, as well as additional data from vendors, partners, and data providers.
Where paid marketing is concerned, it leverages a broad array of advertising channels, including television, radio, social media platforms, search, and influencer marketing. For iGaming, these efforts are concentrated within the specific jurisdictions that have passed enabling legislation and regulations, and in which the company operates or intends to operate (which vary on a per-offering basis). For Sportsbook and DFS, much of its advertising is national to realize efficiencies on buying media on the national market versus local. The company’s digital lottery courier marketing through the Jackpocket brand focuses on draw-based and scratch lottery, similarly oriented around legal jurisdictions while leveraging national spending for efficiencies for draw-based lottery.
In addition to traditional paid advertising channels, the company cross-promotes its product offerings to its users through internal channels, such as email and push notifications. Additionally, it encourages its users to refer new users through its ‘Refer-a-Friend’ program.
League, Team, and Media Relationships - The company engages in relationships with sports leagues, including the NFL, NBA, MLB, NHL, and UFC, and professional sports teams to improve its brand awareness, improve user retention, and create unique collaborative integrations for its users. It also engages in relationships with media partners, including Amazon, which selected DraftKings as a sponsor and official pre-game odds provider for Thursday Night Football (‘TNF’) on Prime Video in September 2022. Under the multi-year agreement, TNF on Prime Video will feature DraftKings integrations in its live pregame, including odds and additional sports betting insights, as well as other TNF-themed offerings.
Distribution
The company distributes its online sportsbook, iGaming, DFS, and digital lottery courier product offerings through various channels, including traditional websites, direct app downloads, and global direct-to-consumer digital platforms, such as the Apple App Store and the Google Play Store. These two digital platforms are the main distribution channels for its product offerings. The company’s product offerings are delivered as a free application through both the Apple App Store and Google Play Store and are also accessible via mobile and traditional websites. It derives nearly all of its revenue through product offerings distributed via the Apple App Store, Google Play Store, and via traditional websites. For all of its product offerings, neither Apple nor Google take any revenue share for distribution.
Intellectual Property
The company’s business substantially relies on the creation, acquisition, use, and protection of intellectual property. Some of this intellectual property is in the form of software code, patented technology, and trade secrets that it uses to develop and properly run its Sportsbook, iGaming, DFS-related, and digital lottery courier product offerings and related services.
The company also creates intellectual property that includes proprietary sports betting, iGaming, digital lottery courier, and DFS-related technology and content, as well as proprietary data acquired from the use of those product offerings.
It pursues the registration of its domain names, trademarks, and service marks in the United States and in locations outside the United States. Its registered trademarks in the United States include ‘DraftKings,’ and the names of certain of its brands, product offerings, services, and applications, among others.
Government Regulation
The company operates its GNOG-branded iGaming product offering in Michigan, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and West Virginia, subject to licenses issued by the Michigan Gaming Control Board, the New Jersey Division of Gaming Enforcement, Pennsylvania Gaming Control Board, and the West Virginia Lottery, respectively.
Because it handles, collects, stores, receives, transmits, and otherwise processes certain personal information of its users and employees, the company is subject to U.S. federal and state laws and foreign laws related to the privacy and protection of such data, and it may also face particular privacy, data security, and data protection risks in connection with requirements under the amended California Consumer Privacy Act and its implementing regulations, Virginia’s Consumer Data Protection Act, the General Data Protection Regulation of the European Union (EU) 2016/679 (the ‘GDPR’), and other data protection regulations.
History
DraftKings Inc. was founded in 2012.