DraftKings had a long journey from daily fantasy sports start-up to global gaming giant and prediction markets entrant. Co-founder and CEO Jason Robins recounted how it happened in a new interview with the SBC Leaders podcast.
Robins talked to host Sue Schneider about:
- How his and his co-founders’ corporate experience set DraftKings up for success
- The company’s early days as a DFS competitor before the repeal of PASPA unlocked the regulated online sports betting opportunity
- The biggest challenges he and his company faced during its establishment and expansion
- Why the prediction markets situation has similarities with ‘DFS 2.0’
Jason Robins: Early DraftKings had no thoughts of sports betting
It seems a long time ago that DraftKings was one of numerous sites offering a fledgling DFS product. Robins told Schneider that initially, offering users the best possible daily version of what he considered a season-long game of skill was the company’s only focus, and the debate about whether DFS constituted real-money gaming took him a little by surprise.
“We didn’t even think of what we were doing as gaming, we were thinking of it as fantasy sports,” Robins said of that time. “Obviously, over time, it was proven to be a game of skill, but I didn’t appreciate that that was something that those of us who were close to it might understand and, on the surface, others might look at it differently.”
The DraftKings CEO added that sports betting or traditional gambling “was not something we were even remotely contemplating doing” in the early days.
Competing with casino giants, existing sportsbooks
DraftKings grew into one of the two biggest online sports betting companies in the U.S., alongside its DFS rival FanDuel. Robins described his company as something of “a unicorn” in that it did not sell its technology or player database to another firm, but instead went up against casino giants, offshore sportsbooks, and other long-term gambling operations as states began to adopt legal sports wagering in the wake of the repeal of PASPA.
He recalled that during the time that the Supreme Court was reviewing NCAA vs. Murphy, DraftKings leadership was building the best sports betting proposition that it could muster, despite having “no idea what we were doing” in that product vertical.
“Really, for us, it was more that this was the only option other than selling out cheap …” he told Schneider. “We said we’d rather take a shot, and if it fails, it fails.”
Dodging ‘arrows in the back’ as a gaming innovator
Robins and Schneider also discussed how gaming innovators can often take “arrows in the back” during their journey.
“It’s not for the faint of heart,” Robins said.
As for the biggest challenges his company faced, Robins cited the process of some states starting to regulate DFS, taking the company public during the COVID-19 pandemic with sports shut down across North America, and rolling out an initial sports betting product despite a lack of expertise in the field.
“There were a lot of moments that felt like they were one step away from death,” Robins added. “Quite a few bullets dodged … It’s not for the faint of heart.”
Prediction markets latest chapter but ‘same story’
DraftKings evolved from DFS to sports betting, added online casino gaming to the mix, and now offers the latest product. Robins told Schneider that the explosion of prediction markets is in some ways “the same story” for his company: attempting to innovate and execute better than a field of competitors.
“I think it’s the same formula, and the same type of opportunity where we can really make a move,” he said. “Not just in predictions, but in our core business too, because all of our core business competitors are distracted at the moment as well.”
Asked by Schneider to offer some advice for young, would-be entrepreneurs in gaming, Robins returned to the theme of dodging arrows.
“As we’re seeing with the prediction stuff, you’ve got to be ready to deal with all the noise,” he said. “It’s not easy in a regulated industry of any kind to break in, but gaming can be particularly vicious.”
Watch the full interview with Jason Robins on SBC Media’s YouTube channel.
