Why the big jump? Take one guess: Daily Games. There were at least 15 different daily games there and most of the new companies introducing their products were daily content providers, daily software, new daily games for all different sports, etc. It was amazing to see how this area of the market is just transforming this industry. Heck, I barely know anyone at these conferences anymore, but it's cool. I enjoy the extra energy that everyone is providing.
I know some people think these Trade Conferences don't produce results for the consumer, but they do in a lot of different ways. Here are some things that I saw that was interesting:
** Exempt States: I'm a member of the FSTA Board of Directors and I salute Peter Schoenke of Rotowire.com who has headed this Committee that is working on the exempt states. Peter has hired a lobbyist in Iowa and another lobbyist in Arizona to work on legislation that would allow those residents to play in fantasy games. Right now there are 5-6 exempt states because their gambling laws are very vague and we're trying to either make them less vague or to include the same carveout language that we have in a federal law. Iowa is the closest to enacting this new language in a bill that is being sponsored by a first-term representative. We hope that something will move forward by March of this year and hopefully both chambers will approve it. Iowa looks promising. We have another good contact in Arizona and believe that there are positive vibes there for the new language. This one might take longer, but we are hopeful in Arizona. Even Washington is a possibility as we are talking to a representative there about adding this language involving fantasy sports. The fact that Arizona is hosting the Super Bowl this week with a team from another exempt state hasn't been lost on us. We're letting folks know.
** STATS was involved on the Next Generation Panel to talk about SportVu and the analytics that come from that technology. The NBA is sharing much of that data on NBA.com, which can help fantasy players who set daily lineups. Now the NFL is working with Zebra Technologies that involves unique data that will incorporate chips into the football and onto players' shoulder pads. It will be unveiled at the Pro Bowl this week and you'll be able to see the velocity on the ball, velocity on the players' tackles, and more. This is a new partnership with the NFL and the data likely will be owned by the NFL, but hopefully they will share a lot of this on NFL.com like the NBA is doing. But it's very unique technology that likely needs approval yet from the Players Association before being implemented in regular season games. But this is the next step in stats.
** STATS was on another panel involving fantasy sports in national restaurant chains and Ben Nelson of Buffalo Wild Wings was one of the presenters. He said that more than 100,000 local leagues held their fantasy football drafts at Buffalo Wild Wings this year and the future is very bright for that combination. We like the sounds of that as well as it's a nice way to reintroduce fantasy players into live drafts at cool venues. You'll hear more about this in the near future.
** Nigel Eccles of FanDuel was on hand for our Demographic Trends Panel where we compared consumers from daily games to consumers from season-long games. We compared FanDuel's numbers with the FSTA's annual incidence survey and the results showed that the consumer base is very similar. The daily player is probably 5-7 years younger than the season-long player, but demographics are very similar. Here are some interesting facts about the daily game:
a) 95% are male at FanDuel
b) 39.2% of daily players are between ages of 25-34 compared to 34% of season-long players
c) 83% of FanDuel customers are also season-long players
d) 17.2% of FanDuel players are not season-long players and half of that total are playing fantasy sports for the first time
e) FanDuel's user base is closing in on 1.2 million uniques
f) 20% of daily fantasy players increased their consumption of watching sports, reading sports, using Apps for sports; They increased their level of participation in sports from 17 hours a week to 24 hours and 7 hours is dedicated to research
g) $25 is the median deposit at FanDuel
h) 62% of entries at FanDuel are at $1 or $2
i) 65% of FanDuel customers are under the age of 35
j) The #1 reason for playing daily games is excitement & competition. Winning money was 3rd
They are interesting facts and I think we'll do this comparison each year going forward. The daily space is growing faster than any other segment of the industry and everyone is trying to carve out their niche. Good luck to all of them and we'll just continue to grow our high-stakes games in quiet over here.
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