Tuesday, July 29, 2014

The Next Big Industry?


Fantasy sports is something many people play and enjoy. Some play for fun and some play for money. People always seem to say they lose interest in fantasy baseball because the season is too long so they forget they even have a team. The same can apply to fantasy basketball and hockey. The season long commitment is one of the negatives people always talk about in fantasy sports.


However, there is an alternative if you don't want to play the whole season. Daily fantasy sports (DFS) is an up and coming industry. You may ask what the difference is. The main difference is you have a salary cap and you pick players every day. There are contests for baseball, basketball, hockey and even golf. There is an entry fee and you score points similar to a fantasy sports league and a certain number of people will get paid. This gives you a choice on what days you want to play so you don't have to pay attention every day. You are basically gambling on players to sum it up but daily fantasy sports has a legal safe harbor under the 2006 Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act.


The two biggest sites for daily fantasy sports are FanDuel and DraftKings. They actually had a legal battle so obviously these two are sites are very competitive. Another site was DraftStreet but they were recently bought by DraftKings so now they are working together. There are other sites, but these two are the leaders in the industry. In 2013 it was reported that FanDuel had $11 million in revenue in series C financing. DraftKings later reported they had $24 million in revenue in series B financing.

It doesn't look like the daily fantasy sports industry is slowing down any time soon. You now see commercials on TV and DraftKings and FanDuel are now spending more money on advertisements. Sports Illustrated is even looking about joining the industry and if they do, that would be a big deal. If you are interested in fantasy sports and possibly making (or losing) money I would take a look at daily fantasy sports. The future of daily fantasy sports looks bright and unless it gets shut down like online poker, I believe it will continue to thrive.

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Alan Liang is a senior Drexel Sport Management major with minors in Marketing and Business Administration from West Windsor, NJ. Alan scores baseball games for Baseball Info Solutions and is currently on co-op with the Philadelphia 76ers in the camps department. Follow Alan on Twitter @AlanLiang29. 

Connect with Alan on LinkedIn.

2 comments:

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