DraftKings CEO Jason Robins, in a televised interview with Bloomberg, has predicted that the nascent legalised sports betting market in the US could be worth tens of billions of dollars, but only if there is broad acceptance across the country.
Talking about the potential for growth he stated: “It really depends how many states do this – I think obviously the more states the more the market will grow. All in though, we think this is a market that’s tens of billions of dollars – hundreds of billions in handle and tens of billions in revenue, assuming that a good chunk of states end up legalising sports betting.”
While being proud of DraftKings’ status as being first to market in New Jersey, Robins is aware that his company will have other snapping at its heels. He said: “We love competition; competition’s what gets everybody up in the morning. It’s like sports – if you’ve got nobody on the other side of the field well why even bother showing up. So for us it’s really about making sure that we always stay at the top of our game in innovating and responding to our customers. If we do that we think we’ll stack up well against the competition.”
When pushed on where his company gains the edge on its peers, Robins responded: “Well I think firstly we are a tech company whereas a lot of our competition are basically hotel and hospitality businesses that have launched online businesses. They’ll still be fierce competitors and they’ll do a great job but we feel the online piece is more core to our DNA.”
He added: “We also have a huge database and brand already in the sports space and people already identify and think of us as a place to go bet on sports, so that’s a major advantage. And we have that nationally whereas most casinos only have the local markets that they operate in.”
