Today DraftKings and FanDuel, two companies that started out running Daily Fantasy Sports competitions, but moved quickly into sports betting post-PASPA to capture more than 70 percent of the market, leaving legacy casino brands like Caesars and MGM in their dust.

They accomplished this by getting a head start on the competition with technology and customer acquisition, then investing heavily in marketing, saturating the airwaves with ads, and offering huge promotions to new customers. 

DraftKings Chief Executive Officer and Co-founder, Jason Robins, took part in a fireside chat at The Craig-Hallum Online Gaming Conference.

During this virtual event, he discussed various topics, including the possibility of increased iGaming legislation being passed in 2025.

Asked by host Ryan Sigdahl: You think about your biggest peers in the U.S., have international, thinking Flutter, Entain, but they have international businesses, have been around a long time that they’ve evolved those products to the U.S. market. You guys are U.S. born or U.S. native, and you’ve built this product for the U.S. market, but can you compare and contrast kind of if you think that’s an advantage or potentially starting at a disadvantage, given what they have?

Jason Robins said: I think it’s bit of both initially, because, obviously, while having a presence and focus here, having a customer base, having all of those things here, having a brand, all helped a ton. Initially, we were behind when it came to product and technology, and it wasn’t till we acquired SBTech and then ultimately put a lot of work into it over the last several years that we feel like we’re really a premier place in the market when it comes to our technology and product capabilities.

So, I think that what you’re seeing is over time, that’s going to become more and more of an advantage because the things that we were initially behind on, we have been able to rapidly close the gap. And now, in some cases, actually get out ahead of the vast majority of our competitors in the market now.

For example, you opened up this conversation by asking me about the NFL outcomes. If you have a lot of markets that are betting on soccer and other sports predominantly, the NFL outcomes become less of a variance in the business. Not that that matters long-term, because, over the long-term, it should smooth out, but there are benefits to having more diversification across different sports and different geographies.

So, it is something that we believe there will be a place for us to do in time. But I do think that, what you’re seeing now is that some of the advantages that we’ve had of focus are really being combined with now having closed gaps and started to put some distance between us and most of the competition, in many categories of both the sports and casino offering.

Ryan Sigdahl: Last question, Jason, but what are you excited about as we head into 2025?

Jason Robins: I think 2025 is going to be another huge growth year. Every sign is pointing to that. Obviously, really excited about state legislative front. 2024 was an election year. It’s always hard to get gaming bills done in an election year. I think this year coming up, 2025, we’re going to get some real momentum potentially even get some iGaming bills over the hump, which should be great. So, those are some of the things that I’m really excited for what we have planned on the product front. We have an incredible product roadmap and, I think, really, you’re going to start to see us make huge accelerations in live betting and continue to drive that whole rate up. So, a lot of upside we think there. So, really excited. Big year coming up.