FanDuel to double its revenue to $1.9 billion this year, experts foresee

As the American sports betting market takes off, with 30 states set to allow this sort of wagering by the Super Bowl season, FanDuel Group Inc. has emerged as the top business in the field, having taken a 42% share of U.S. sports wagers in June, which represents a 35% increase compared to the previous two months, Eilers & Krejcik Gaming LLC reported. 

FanDuel’s nearest competitor is DraftKings Inc, which has a 23% share of the market. The two companies were neck and neck in the business of daily fantasy sports contests before FanDuel was acquired by the Irish bookmaker, Flutter Entertainment Plc. After this acquisition, Flutter’s U.S. revenue is expected to more than double to $1.9 billion this year, according to analysts’ estimates compiled by Bloomberg. 

DraftKings and FanDuel are the leading businesses in sports betting in the U.S.

Founded in 2009, FanDuel helped pioneer the business of daily fantasy sports, where contestants pick a dream lineup of real players and compete to win a pot of money based on their team’s performance in a single day or week, rather than over an entire season.  

As the company began offering more traditional sports bets (like the results of a game of Tampa Bay Buccaneers vs. Los Angeles Rams), business took off. 40% of its customers come from its daily fantasy business, a database that now includes 13 million names. After being acquired by Flutter, horse racing connections led to opening FanDuel’s sportsbook at New Jersey’s Meadowlands Racetrack in 2018. This gave the company an advantage as New Jersey became one of the hotspots in the new sports betting era in the country. 

The Meadowlands Racetrack in New Jersey

Peter Jackson, Flutter’s CEO, commented: “We’ve got momentum, and we have a huge amount of revenue. A lot of other people are almost in startup mode”.

Jackson had been CEO for just months when he purchased FanDuel. He bought a majority stake for $158 million in cash plus the contribution of Flutter’s U.S. assets, which included the horse betting business TVG.

Peter Jackson, Flutter CEO

FanDuel was able to introduce products such as same-game parlays, which allow customers to bet on multiple teams or events. 

Vice President at Vixio Gambling Compliance, James Kilsby, explained that these sorts of bets are “harder to win”, as customers are betting on two contingencies. This means that the company keeps “a larger chunk of wagers and can out-earn rivals”. Kilsby noted that this has helped FanDuel grow its market shares. 

The FanDuel brand will be a frequent sight on TV this football season. The company hired Wieden+Kennedy, the ad agency behind Nike Inc.’s “Just Do It” campaign, and has rolled out a series of commercials featuring golfer Jordan Spieth. 

“We’re operating on a completely different level to anyone else in the U.S.,” Jackson concluded.

FanDuel has recently inaugurated their brand new retail  FanDuel Sportsbook lounge, located in the Footprint Center - home of the Phoenix Suns basketball team -, as the company launched its mobile sportsbook, online horse racing and deposit wagering platform TVG in Arizona, which market went live on September 9.