Part one of our exclusive interview with Jason Robins can be found here.
EGR: You recently described the igaming vertical as “humming”. What is working for DraftKings right now?
Jason Robins (JR): I think the biggest thing is the same things I was talking about earlier, which is a very strong focus on product and customer experience. It’s not any one particular thing. I’d love to say there’s a silver bullet, and here’s what it is, but there’s not. There’s been so many little things that, depending on how you want to look at it, we weren’t executing on well before, or we are executing well now.
But I think it’s been a lot of little things that really have collectively added up to us feeling like we’ve now created the strongest customer experience in igaming, too. I can’t say that two years ago or even a year-and-a-half ago we were there. When you think about one thing affecting a very small segment of customers, but there’s 10 or 20 of those things, that adds up.
It has been about steadily executing through improving and making sure the content is great, making sure we’re creating really good, engaging experiences for customers, and making sure that all the other things supporting it – the customer service, the marketing – are all in sync. I think a lot of it was we were not in sync before. We were doing one thing on the product side but marketing something else, and now I think all it is more cohesively put together.
EGR: DK Replay is only live in Oregon. That was a real piece of sports betting innovation, so could this be product pushed into additional states as igaming legislation continues to stall?
JR: It has been a good product for us. With everything else going on, we haven’t really made a big push to get it into too many more states yet. It’s been decent, but I wouldn’t say it’s been absolutely fantastic or anything in terms of results. But I do think there’s something there. I agree with you. I think there’s not enough innovation now, and sometimes it’s because it’s hard because every time you innovate, it’s a pain to get it through all the regulators.
But we don’t want to let that stop us. We have to make sure, obviously, we’re working with the regulators. But just because something takes a little effort to explain, we don’t want people to shy away from it. But this is a great example of something that’s probably being under leveraged, in part because it’s just been more challenging to get it rolled out in a broader footprint.
EGR: We’ve seen in Florida what Hard Rock Bet is doing with Games powered by Past Motor Racing. There’s demand for this type of product?
JR: Exactly, there is definitely demand.
EGR: On the DraftKings Super App, what progress are you seeing around cross-sell and attracting players to the predictions offering in non-OSB states?
JR: That’s been the single biggest unlock of our growth in predictions because it’s not just cross-selling the existing players, which is obviously a big part of it, or cross-selling new predictions customers into other products, which has also been very successful. It’s also the fact it allows us to utilise our very powerful nationwide marketing footprint, including the partnerships we have with various media partners and some of the sports leagues, to push consumers towards one singular destination.
That doesn’t mean we have to have a different marketing message to push predictions compared to sports betting. Even before we were doing that, we were finding a lot of people in these places who had predictions were just downloading the sports betting app anyway. Because if you’re a customer and you’re seeing a commercial, it’s hard to internalise and think, ‘No, this is a different app from that other thing I’ve been seeing advertised for a long time’. It is just easier in terms of the customer experience to not make you go to the App Store and try to figure out which app to download. We’re just going to put it all here for you, and we’re going to drive you to a singular destination.
The interesting thing that we don’t talk enough about is a lot of this is really a technology story. Part of why many other companies in years past have had separate experiences is it’s been really difficult, from both the speed and performance but also overwhelming the customer with too much. It’s been challenging to have everything in the same app in the past, but now it’s come back full circle, and I think that’s the optimal experience. It’s really not something that even a few years ago would have been possible without creating major performance issues.
EGR: DraftKings has been far more North America-focused compared to some of its peers. The provisional ban in Brazil shows international exposure can sometimes be a negative, so has your conservatism paid off?
JR: I don’t know if I’d call it conservatism. It’s probably more just where we wanted to be and felt like our best focus was. It’s terrible what happened recently [in Brazil]. Regardless of what you think the right policy is over the long term, to regulate an industry and only a couple of years later do that, it’s going to give people a lot of hesitance to invest in any country that does that.
But obviously, Brazil’s a big market; lots of money was invested there thinking there’d be a return. That’s not going to come now. And the second thing I’d say is, and we’ve experienced this too, people don’t realise many of these companies are really trying to do the right thing and create great customer experiences and take care of their customers. People have, in many cases, either the wrong impression or they’re taking things that a small number of companies are doing and using them to generalise the entire industry. It’s just an unfortunate thing that happens in any industry, really. But it seems like in gaming it happens quite a bit.
I feel sorry for all those that are dealing with that now. We avoided Brazil for different reasons, and I wish I could say I was close enough to the politics of Brazil to have had a handle on that, but I’m not. But we just felt it was too crowded and, as I said earlier, just felt like with everything going on in the US, our attention and focus was best spent there. We got lucky. We weren’t a part of what happened, but we easily could have been. And it’s something you have to make sure of. Obviously, you’ll really do your homework before you make a big investment anywhere, and that proves it.
EGR: The M&A pipeline as slowed, though you acquired Railbird to build DKeX. You also drew comparisons between that move and replacing Kambi with SBTech on the OSB side. Is there anything else to acquire in predictions beyond Railbird?
JR: We don’t really need to. If you look at what we have now, we have the Futures Commission Merchant licence, we have the Introducing Broker licence, we have the Designated Contract Market licence. We do have a Derivatives Clearing Organisation (DCO) partner but that’s technology we can bring in house without doing M&A at some point. There’s really not much left to buy in terms of technology. Only the DCO and, like I said, I don’t think that is something we feel we need to acquire. So, I think we’re in pretty good shape on that front. Obviously as time goes on, there might be interesting things to look at, but right now I don’t see anything obvious out there.
EGR: One of your co-founders, Matt Kalish, left the business earlier this year. Did it make you think about your future outside of DraftKings and what the business would look like without Jason Robins?
JR: I don’t really think about that. It’s hard to think anywhere beyond maybe five to 10 years. But in that time frame, I’m not going anywhere. Not unless we’re not performing and I’m not the right person. But I’m not going to [leave] from a personal interest standpoint.
When you start to feel that way, and Matt probably started to feel that way in the years before, that’s when you start thinking about those things. Then you start thinking about what’s the right way to transition. We always have succession plans. We always had the plan for what happens if [fellow co-founder] Paul [Liberman], Matt or I get hit by a bus. But in terms of a personal plan, I’m not planning on going anywhere anytime soon, so I don’t think about it much.
The post Exclusive: “I’m not planning on going anywhere anytime soon”, insists DraftKings CEO first appeared on EGR Intel.
In this second part of EGR’s Q&A with Jason Robins, the CEO and co-founder discusses how the Super App has been “the single biggest unlock of our growth in predictions” and the “terrible” betting ban in Brazil
The post Exclusive: “I’m not planning on going anywhere anytime soon”, insists DraftKings CEO first appeared on EGR Intel.