March 9, 2021
At its inception in 2012, DraftKings was built to be a daily fantasy sports website. It started with baseball and quickly expanded to now include most major sports. It has since grown into one of the largest online fantasy sports and sports betting companies in the United States. While still running its fantasy sports leagues, DraftKings has expanded to include DraftKings Sportsbook, their sports betting arm. With that expansion, we have seen an expansion of DraftKings advertising as well.
DraftKings Advertising Analysis
The most obvious expansion has simply been in the number of states they are able to operate in. As sports betting and especially online sports betting have expanded in recent years, DraftKings Sportsbook has extended its advertising reach into more and more markets, as seen below. They now operate in 11 states, a huge expansion since the supreme court struck down a federal ban on sports betting in 2018. Sports betting has rapidly expanded since then and 2019 was the first full year of legalized sports betting in the United States.
We’ve also seen a straightforward increase in the number of ads DraftKings is running. Presumably, as the size of their operation increases and their revenue increases, they are able to advertise more. For example, in the whole of 2019 DraftKings ran 6,500 ads in the New York market –their top market in 2019; this year they’ve already run over 2,700 ads in New York and close to 4,000 in the Philadelphia market – their top market this year. Because of this huge expansion, DraftKings has run 23% of all gaming ads in 2021, second only to FanDuel at 45%.
We’ve all seen a DraftKings ad – or at least those of us who live in a market where they’re running ads have – they ran over 43,000 ads between the end of the NFL regular season and the Super Bowl Sunday. They tend to follow a similar format, their spokeswoman is talking about some huge promotion they have that could help you win big. They’re quick, easy to digest, and make you think winning is easy. Below is their top ad from the last five days, which has run a total of 645 times during that time.
https://s3.amazonaws.com/pdfweb/videos/1a21eba4-2d50-44e3-ba4a-08708949e395.mp4
