5 Star sat down with DraftKing’s head of sports book Johnny Avello to discuss how one of America’s biggest operators is dealing with coronavirus.

COVID-19 is having a severe impact on betting and wagering, and the picture is looking particularly grim for some iGaming business sectors. Live sports betting sites have suffered significantly due to its direct dependence on the professional sporting events that are being postponed and cancelled. How is DraftKings adapting to this?

While many sports are on hiatus, DraftKings is certainly not. Our company is no stranger to adversity, and has instilled a culture of resilience and continuous innovation that is arguably on display now more than ever. As various mainstream professional sports seasons began to shutter, we remained dynamic and looked toward more non-traditional offerings ranging across lesser-known sports, politics, popular culture, esports, simulations and more. Free-to-play pools available nationally on our sportsbook platform have been especially adaptive with nearly 500K entries and over $125K in prize pay-outs to date, all based around creative, topical offers such as Top Chef, Tiger King, eNASCAR virtual racing, Shark Tank, the Democratic Debate and much more.

In a period where many people are looking for fun diversions, we hope to be even a small bright spot and source of entertainment. 

Which verticals has seen the most activity for DraftKings during COVID-19?

Despite being in its offseason, the NFL still reigns supreme for overall betting activity. Wagers on the champion of Super Bowl LV in 2021 are the most popular, and we’ve also seen considerable engagement around NFL free agency betting particularly as several high-profile players have been on the move already this spring. For example, the day after Tom Brady’s announcement to leave New England, DraftKings took 30x more money and 10x the number of bets on the Buccaneers to win the Super Bowl than all of last year on the Bucs to win last season’s championship.

This year’s “fully virtual” NFL Draft has also proven to be a boon among bettors, and with numerous betting markets available on DraftKings, fans are most keen on the exact order of the first three picks—the majority are betting Burrow, Young then Okudah. Related to NFL, on the daily fantasy side DraftKings has streamed dozens of Madden NFL simulations with live play-by-play commentary and received over 2 million contest entries for these virtual games. Offerings based around video games like Madden have not been the only focus at DraftKings either, as esports have been another prominent vertical.

Esports betting, do you think esports fans are open to the industry or they perceive it with mistrust?

There is absolutely an openness among fans toward esports betting, and the expansion of the industry itself has been prolific with professional leagues development and robust online streaming communities.

As the digital transformation of sports deepens, DraftKings accepted esports wagers in New Jersey for the first time ever starting with the 2019 League of Legends World Championship.

Esports are undoubtedly a spectator sport, so if more state laws begin to prohibit this type of wagering, it certainly has potential to become a significant betting market. Things we will need to consider include viewer demographics typically skew younger, however, there are also many people all of age demographics who watch esports. I think those of legal wagering age would be interested to engage. Perhaps our best evidence at DraftKings for the demand of esports betting is in our esports daily fantasy business.

To date, we have seen a 20x increase in the number of customers playing esports daily fantasy along with a 50x spike in total entries into esports daily fantasy contests. Given the global suspensions and cancellations of many sports seasons, our team has already launched esports daily fantasy for Counter Strike: Global Offensive and Rocket League to accompany our League of Legends offering that originally launched in 2015. We’ll soon be launching daily fantasy for competitive Call of Duty as well as a Fantasy League of Legends Online Championship with $400K in cash prizes—our largest fantasy esports tournament ever. 

Is there anything you would like to add? I am sure our readers would be thrilled to know about any upcoming events and developments around the DraftKings platform.

While DraftKings continues to stay dynamic with product innovation that keeps people entertained during these trying times, I also want to bring attention to an important initiative called #DKRally. This charity campaign is committing up to $1 million to United Way, with an initial donation of $500,000, by calling upon fans worldwide to join them in sharing their rally cap photos on social media while cheering on the local heroes of our communities who are on the frontlines of the COVID-19 pandemic. Many icons of the sports industry, including Texans quarterback DeShaun Watson and former NFC East rivals Justin Tuck and Brian Westbrook, joined the cause to show their support and encourage others to spread the word.