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Yahoo’s announced entry into Daily Fantasy Sports last week doesn’t scare industry start-up DraftKings, unless CEO Jason Robins is just putting up a good front.
“We think it’s tremendous for the industry that such a renowned digital company like Yahoo is choosing to join our space, and it serves as further proof of the popularity of daily fantasy sports.”
Yahoo has long been a player in the season-long fantasy space. It is far from a startup company. Yahoo already has hundreds of thousands of customers it can convert from season long to Daily Fantasy players in just a matter of weeks, providing the likes of DFS industry leaders DraftKings and FanDuel with instant competition, something neither has had up until now.
Here’s what the New York Times had to say Monday:
Yahoo could no more resist entering daily fantasy than the investors and leagues that own pieces of FanDuel and DraftKings — or the teams and leagues that have sponsorship deals with them.
“We try to use the sports fans as a compass,” said Kathy Savitt, Yahoo’s chief marketing officer. “We’re focused on what do sports fans want and how do we delight them.”
DraftKings just lost out on a potential deal with Disney in which the later company was prepared to take a 40 percent ownership in DraftKings only to back out last minute after realizing they “did not want to taint its well-crafted family image by owning a chunk of a company in a business that feels a little too close to gambling”.
DraftKings has since entered into a sponsorship deal with Disney-owned ESPN and anticipates an investment by Fox Sports some time this week.
- Aaron Goldstein, Gambling911.com
