Matt King, Chief Executive Officer at FanDuel revealed that the company plans to continue growing on the legal sports betting market in the U.S. In an interview for Bloomberg Markets: The Close, FanDuel’s CEO outlined that there is a “massive illegal market for sports betting” which the company plans to “put out of business”. Furthermore, he added that the gaming industry is one of the last industries that is yet to embrace the online presence. To continue growing in the competitive U.S. market, according to Mr. King, FanDuel has three distinctive qualities: the best partners, the best product, and the best brand.
Explaining this further, he added that FanDuel has business relationships with significant partners. An example that Mr. King gave is FanDuel’s partnership with Entercom inked only 2 weeks ago. According to him, another key partner of FanDuel is Turner Sports. In mid-October, the operator inked a multi-year partnership and became the exclusive sportsbook partner of the NBA Programming on Turner Sports and the Bleacher report. Another key quality by FanDuel is that it provides the best product in terms of user experience, Mr. King added.
However, according to FanDuel’s CEO, perhaps one of the most important qualities that the company has is that it’s a well-known and trusted brand. According to him, brand recognition strengthens the relationship with clients, especially when the clients need to share sensitive data such as personal and payment information.
FanDuel’s Sports Betting Launch in Tennessee
Mr. King said that the legalization of sports betting brings huge market opportunities to states that legalize it. Consequently, according to him, more states are seeing the legalization of online sports betting and online gaming process as “common sense“. Acknowledging that usually, it takes 6-12 months between the passing of a law until the start of operations, FanDuel’s CEO said that the company tries to launch sports betting as soon the activity is allowed by law in the given state.
As an example, Mr. King gave the Tennessee market, which proved to be a big success. Back in May 2019, the state passed the first online sports betting bill. Proving that the process can take longer, the licensing of the operators in Tennessee began in September this year. FanDuel was among the first few operators that received license along with DraftKings and BetMGM. Set to launch on November 1, FanDuel did not wait and launched its sportsbook the first day possible. In fact, FanDuel was live at 12:01 which is 1 minute after operators in the state were allowed to legally launch sports betting in Tennessee.
Focusing on consumer protection, Mr. King revealed that being a part of Flutter Entertainment, FanDuel was able to gain access to knowledge that was developed over more than 20 years. He added that FanDuel has always taken responsible gaming very seriously and the company brought this knowledge and implemented it in a way that works for the U.S. market.