FanDuel vs DraftKings | Open The Gates | 2

27:35But now all of those barriers are gone. Not only is the casino sitting there alongside your text messages, your email, your socials, but with notifications, it can come looking for you. I know that may sound like a small technological change, but behaviorally, this is huge. All the notifications and accessibility of mobile gaming would have been addictive enough on its own, but the isolation of COVID has supercharged the problem. In March 2021, the National Council on Problem Gambling reports that sports bettors in particular tend to exhibit more indicators for, quote, problematic play than people betting on other things.

28:21Behaviors like lying to cover up gambling debts and borrowing money to pay one's bills. As the public learns more about these dangers, FanDuel and DraftKings are focused on reclaiming market share. They're not just battling each other. They're also fighting BetMGM, which by August 2021 leaps ahead to claim an estimated 32 % share of the U.S. online gaming market. The same month, Caesars Entertainment launches a new sportsbook app, boosted by a massive ad campaign starring comedian J.B. Smoove. In the ads, Smoove appears like an emperor with golden laurels on his head. He steps out onto a balcony to address a massive cheering crowd and announces, We are all Caesars!

29:08So much for their quiet equity partnership with DraftKings. Caesars is ready to go all in on its own sports betting app thanks to a splashy$4 billion acquisition of William Hill, a nearly 100-year-old London-based betting company. Among other offerings, the Caesars app boasts that every bet you place, win or lose, will count toward your Caesars rewards, meaning the company is leveraging access to its brick-and-mortar empire as an incentive to keep on playing. It's not like DraftKings or FanDuel has its own luxury hotel, right? But that's not the only incentive Caesars offers. In January 2022, New York becomes the 18th state to legalize online sports betting, adding 20 million Americans to the potential customer pool and instantly becoming the country's biggest sports betting market.

30:04And Caesars sees its chance. It offers an unprecedented$300 sign-up bonus for new customers, plus a first deposit match of up to$3 ,000. That's literally giving away free money on the assumption that customers are statistically likely to lose it all and keep on betting. In the short term, this strategy proves shockingly effective. In its debut week, Caesars claims more than 40 % of New York's mobile market, crushing FanDuel and DraftKings in those critical first weeks of operation. Coming out of the gate hot makes Caesars a legitimate threat. Whether all those new customers will stick around? That's another question.

30:54If you've ever wondered why these companies were suddenly offering hundreds of dollars just to get you through the door, here's why. In a brand new market, the first battle isn't necessarily to make money from you. It's to make sure you develop a habit on their app instead of somebody else's. Once you've got an account, learned the interface, and deposited some money, switching takes at least a little effort. Kind of like trying to go from an iPhone to an Android, or vice versa. Okay, no, it's not quite that painful, but in a business that's this competitive, even a little friction can be worth a lot.

31:31Caesar's strong showing is bad news for FanDuel and DraftKings. Before, they saw the legacy casino brands as dinosaurs. Big, but on the cusp of extinction. But now, MGM and Caesars are battling their way to real relevance. FanDuel and DraftKings will have to fight back and keep growing excitement around their apps. But having saturated the ad markets, what more can they do?

32:03It's June 2022. At Chicago's Wrigley Field, the temperature is already heating up. From behind his wraparound sunglasses, Jason Robbins surveys the reporters gathered in front of him. Robbins is standing in front of a construction site directly next to the ballpark. Beside him is the president of the Chicago Cubs. And they're here to celebrate a partnership that would have been unthinkable just a few years earlier. DraftKings is building an on-premises sportsbook directly connected to Wrigley Field. The relationship between Major League Sports and betting apps goes deep. The NFL has been selling data insights to companies like FanDuel and DraftKings since the early days of daily fantasy.

32:50NBA Commissioner Adam Silver came out in favor of legalized gambling years before that was a mainstream opinion. But Major League Baseball, that's been a tougher nut to crack, especially given the league's history of gambling scandals. Think the 1919 Black Sox scandal, Pete Rose betting on baseball, and so on. That didn't stop MLB from making a few deals during the daily fantasy era, but bringing full-blown gambling into an historic century-old baseball cathedral? That's something else. When this on-site sportsbook is finished, fans will be able to place a bet at Wrigley as easily as buying an overpriced beer.

33:30The move is particularly valuable to DraftKings, who will reportedly pay the Cubs$100 million over the next 10 years for the right to operate where the action is. This partnership with the Cubs doesn't keep DraftKings competitors away from baseball. The very next year, FanDuel will ink its own deal to become an MLB sports betting partner. But the in-person footprint at Wrigley gives DraftKings brand visibility and a powerful tool for customer acquisition. More than 80 % of sports bettors are under 55, while the age of the average baseball fan is 57. Major league execs may be hoping this will attract a younger crowd to the ballpark, and DraftKings may be hoping it will entice more old-timers to place a wager, growing their user base among Gen X and Boomers, a demographic likely more familiar with legacy casino brands like Caesars and MGM.

34:31It's a$100 million bet that DraftKings is hoping to win, because in 2022, the stakes couldn't be higher. For FanDuel and DraftKings, onboarding new customers and keeping them loyal has always been a cutthroat business. But since the casino brands disrupted their duopoly, DraftKings has been struggling to retain market share, and FanDuel has been surging ahead. By July 2022, experts estimate that FanDuel controls 47 % market share, while DraftKings and BetMGM control 35 % between them. FanDuel is also turning a quarterly profit for the first time in its history. DraftKings isn't. This might be surprising to the casual sports fan.

35:22After all, DraftKings and FanDuel have always traded time in the spotlight blow for blow. They've both used celebrities in their ads. In fact, both have used Charles Barkley. But DraftKings has doubled and tripled down on this strategy, stacking its ads with everyone from Kristen Schaal to Martin Lawrence. NBA legend and superstar Michael Jordan has been a board advisor and investor since 2020. And ahead of the 2023 Super Bowl, DraftKings will forge an exclusive deal with Kevin Hart. So, from the outside, you might think DraftKings has the bigger footprint. But you'd be wrong. Why and how has FanDuel surged ahead?

36:06Well, for one thing, sheer size. Remember, in 2018, FanDuel was acquired by the Dublin-based juggernaut Paddy Power Betfair. In 2019, the group was renamed Flutter Entertainment. By fall 2022, Flutter has a market cap of around$22 billion, while DraftKings has plunged from a pandemic high of over$30 billion to around$7 billion in less than two years. That deep-pocketed backing allowed FanDuel to spend a billion dollars on advertising and promotion in 2021. You know, there's an advantage that startups are supposed to have over giants. They're nimble, right? They can move faster, take chances, change direction.

36:51But there comes a point in a business war when sheer size becomes a weapon. Think about why on a platform as popular as YouTube, no one's emerged as a serious competitor, right? Google runs YouTube. They can spend whatever it takes to win over creators and customers and advertisers. A bigger parent company gives a company like FanDuel a basic rather brutal advantage, the ability to absorb a hit and keep on spending. Another less discussed factor in FanDuel's recent ascendance, women. In 2021, more than 4.6 million women joined sports betting apps in the U.S., a 115 % increase from the year prior.

37:37and FanDuel is winning them over at a rate of nearly 2 to 1. Perhaps not coincidentally, it's a demographic win overseen by FanDuel's new CEO, Amy Howe. In a 2022 interview, Howe pointed out that nearly 50 % of sports fans are women, but the sports betting population sits at 33%. She described how FanDuel has good relationships with women's sports leagues like the WNBA and the Women's Tennis Association. And the results speak for themselves. 1.7 million new users in 2021 trouncing the competition. All of this means that FanDuel is surging and DraftKings is shrinking, which puts DraftKings in a quandary.

38:28Every move it makes to elbow its way past its competitors costs more money. From the$100 million spent on its storefront presence at Wrigley, to the millions in celebrity endorsements the company shells out every year, to the financial enticements and promo codes offered to every new player on the app. Caesars set the bar sky high with its$300 giveaway and$3 ,000 price match. But its market gains were temporary. After initially nabbing a 40 % share of the New York market in January 2022, by that fall, Caesars has lost half of that share, slipping back to 20 % in New York and less than 8 % nationally, according to estimates.

39:14Those grand opening giveaways cost Caesars around a half a billion dollars and didn't leave the company much to show for it. But now that Caesars has established giveaways as a precedent, while the other apps feel pressure to follow. For FanDuel and DraftKings, offering players free money to bet with, knowing the customer might bounce when it's gone, is a necessary yet unappealing risk. But they do have ways of mitigating it. Unfortunately, their approach to risk mitigation will be a losing proposition for their most dedicated customers. and it's going to bring some unwelcome attention from their most persistent opponents, regulators.

40:04Hey, it's Mike Corey, the host of Against the Odds from Audible Originals. In each episode, we share thrilling true stories of survival, putting you in the shoes of the people who live to tell the tale. And sometimes we get to hear from survivors themselves in their own words. On our next episode, Sujo John will tell his story of September 11, 2001. That day, he clocked into his job at the World Trade Center's North Tower. Sujo's wife, Mary, pregnant with their first child, worked just next door in the South Tower. Suddenly, an explosion rocked the building, collapsing cubicles and walls. But as Sujo and his office mates raced to escape the smoldering building, they heard another massive explosion.

40:47and Sujo realized his wife and unborn child were also in grave danger. Follow Against the Odds wherever you get your podcasts. Audible subscribers can binge all episodes of Against the Odds early and ad-free right now. Join Audible in the Audible app or by subscribing on Apple Podcasts. Hey, I'm Cassie DePeckel, the host of Against the Odds from Audible Originals. In each episode, we share thrilling true stories of survival, putting you in the shoes of the people who live to tell the tale. In our latest series, it's 1910, and a blizzard has stranded two trains carrying more than 100 people on an isolated stretch high up in the Cascade Mountains of Washington.

41:25The relentless snowfall has made it impossible to clear the tracks. But as snow piles up, the threat of a massive avalanche grows. The passengers and crew will have to rely on their wits, and luck, if they hope to escape alive. Follow Against the Odds wherever you get your podcasts. Audible subscribers can binge all episodes of Against the Odds early and ad-free right now. Join Audible in the Audible app or by subscribing on Apple Podcasts.

42:02It's 2024. In Philadelphia, a man named Terry Thompson looks down at his phone. His heart races. It's a notification from FanDuel. He shouldn't open it. In fact, he should delete this app. Four years ago, Thompson put FanDuel on his phone to place a simple bet on the Eagles. Since then, his entire world has spiraled out of control. In those four short years, Thompson has wagered an astonishing$18.5 million on the app, even gone so far as selling his finance company to fuel his habit. The heavy action won him VIP status with FanDuel. The company plied him with perks from fancy champagne to tickets to the Super Bowl but it also put Thompson nearly two million dollars in the red and left him desperately addicted.

42:57Looking down at his phone, Thompson's curiosity finally gets the better of him. He clicks on the message. He's expecting the usual enticement to place a bet, like a few hundred dollars of bonus cash. But this message is different. It's a personal video recorded by a baseball hero, first baseman Bryce Harper of the Phillies. Hey Terry, what's up brother? Hey man, your host Brittany from FanDuel. I wanted to make sure your Thanksgiving was extra special. So I just wanted to hop on here and wish you and your family a wonderful Thanksgiving. Tell me I said hello. That beep obscures the name of Thompson's young child who just got a personal shout-out from Bryce Harper.

43:37Thompson is overcome. This is really special. And also really creepy. The woman Harper referenced? Brittany? Thompson knows that name, spelled with two T's, two N's, and a Y. Brittany is his so-called VIP manager at FanDuel. According to Thompson, she's the one who keeps offering him perks when his account goes quiet. From his perspective, every time he's close to deleting the app for good, she knows the perfect way to draw him back. In the end, willpower is no match for this kind of ploy. Thompson places a bet. Three months later, he will lose his last$10 ,000. He'll place a call to his therapist, who will alert police.

44:29Thompson is in danger of harming himself. The gambling addiction is bad enough, but with constant outreach and temptations from a VIP manager like Brittany, what chance does he stand to get clean? Thompson's story is an especially brazen example of something more and more people are coming to learn about mobile gaming. the use of VIP managers, is an industry-wide tactic to keep bringing back companies most valuable, as in losingest, customers. Wow. Think about how strange the word VIP becomes in this context. In most businesses, your best customer is someone who gets a lot of value from what you sell.

45:14Here, your most valuable customers can be the people losing the most money. and unlike the casino host of old, an app can know exactly when that customer has stopped playing and reach them wherever they are. Suddenly, personalized customer service and personalized temptation can look an awful lot alike. The scope of this shamelessness gets special attention when John Oliver's TV show Last Week Tonight does a second piece on sports betting, ten years after his piece on daily fantasy. Here's Oliver describing how a DraftKings VIP manager communicated with a woman struggling with a gambling addiction.

45:56He initially wrote back saying, I want to check in with you. Are you still playing within your means slash budget? But when she didn't reply over the next week, DraftKings allegedly sent six emails with enticements to gamble. And she says when she finally sent her host a one sentence reply reading, I am playing within my means, he sent her$250 in credit to, quote, get you back in action. The timing of Oliver's episode isn't accidental, and neither is his use of the word allegedly, because by 2024, DraftKings and FanDuel have been named in several lawsuits from plaintiffs accusing the companies not just of profiting from their gambling addictions, but actively working against their recovery.

46:40Not only that, FanDuel, DraftKings, and their competitors have also been called out publicly for the opposite problem, restricting the ability for skilled bettors to actually win. Many winners on sports betting apps are finding their betting limits mysteriously throttled, or even finding themselves kicked off the apps altogether for the crime of winning money, the thing everyone is ostensibly trying to do. You know, casinos have a long history of showing the door to blackjack players who count cards. Not because card counting is illegal, it isn't. The casino just, well, it doesn't particularly want your business once it decides you've got an edge.

47:25But notice the wrinkle here. You don't have to have mastered some elaborate system. If the house decides you're simply too good at betting, that can be enough. which raises an awkward question for a product built around the tantalizing possibility that you might win. Even Nigel Eccles, FanDuel's creator, says he objects to the practice of kicking people off if they win too often. As he told a reporter, quote, I love games that are beatable. Unfortunately, what they've done with sports betting in the U.S. is turn it into a game that you can't win because if you win, they shut your account. They're selling that you can win, but you can't.

48:08Thanks to the increased media attention of these lawsuits, the general public is starting to understand these games might be rigged.

48:23Remember how in the days of daily fantasy, FanDuel and DraftKings leaned on player skill as the thing that made them legal? Games of skill were legal. Games of chance were not. But now, with sports betting, they're arguing something else. FanDuel and DraftKings claim to be entertainment products only. In fact, in 2021, Jason Robbins told a room full of investors that, quoting here, People who are doing this for profit are not the players we want. Already, the general public is starting to feel queasy about these betting apps, which rely on roping in problem gamblers and kicking off competent ones.

49:05To make matters worse, 2025 is marked by several betting scandals involving professional players shaving points. In the NBA, Miami Heat guard Terry Rozier is arrested as part of a major gambling probe by the FBI. So is former Toronto Raptors player Jontae Porter. In Major League Baseball, two Cleveland Guardians players are also charged. The list goes on. It's a problem that shows no signs of slowing anytime soon. Once upon a time, such players might not have had the power to affect the outcome of a bet. Backup players have limited control over whether the team wins or loses without it looking really obvious.

49:50But because of the surge in prop bets on individual players, suddenly any player has the means, motive, and opportunity to make a quick buck. Conversely, players who stay out of the betting fray are being affected, too, because everything they do, whether they miss a shot or take it, score the touchdown or fumble, ends up affecting people's wagers, for better or for worse. Athletes are routinely subjected to online vitriol, including death threats. Not for losing the game, but for screwing up a sports bettor's parlay. You know, there's something bigger happening here than just more people gambling.

50:32Betting can change what a fan thinks the game is for. Your team can win and you can still walk away furious because somebody missed the rebound that you needed for a prop bet. A meaningless basket in the final seconds can suddenly mean hundreds of dollars to somebody watching at home. The scoreboard hasn't changed, but for millions of people, what counts as winning and losing? Well, it seems to me like that's changed in a very big way indeed. In March 2024, NBA star Tyrese Halliburton went on the record to reporters about the abuse he received over other people's bets, saying, To half the world, I'm just helping them make money on draft games or whatever.

51:14You know what I mean? Like, I'm a prop. You know what I mean? This isn't just happening to professional athletes. It's happening to college players, too. as sports betting apps partner with universities. And in September, five major sports leagues, the NFL, NBA, MLS, NHL, and MLB, banded together to recommend steps that state gaming commissions should take to curb gambling-related harassment. These include establishing lifetime bans on sportsbooks and mobile betting apps for anyone who threatens athletes, coaches, or their families, and asking betting operators to proactively report and flag abuse.

51:53Whether the players are actively participating in cheating or suffering the consequences for not cheating, either way, it's a terrible look for sports. And it's got lawmakers saying it might be time to rein in this industry after all. What does this mean for FanDuel and DraftKings? It's complicated. On the one hand, the sports betting industry is bigger than ever, even with the bad press and the lawsuits. In 2025, sports bettors wagered$167 billion in the U.S. alone. Flutter Entertainment, which owns FanDuel, is the world's largest betting company, and FanDuel retains a leading 41 % share of the U.S.

52:35market. But DraftKings is back in second place with a 32 % market share. DraftKings did finally start turning a profit in 2025, thanks in part to its availability in more states, as well as its PERC system. At the time of this recording, its market cap is just under$12 billion, while Flutter's is just under$17 billion. The two companies might yet find themselves pulling even. It's undeniable that together, FanDuel and DraftKings have transformed the landscape of sports gambling and its role in our society. Once, betting on the game was a thing you might do with friends or at a casino. Now, it's something you can do instantly.

53:20From your couch, between pitches or dribbles of the ball, you can bet on major sports or obscure ones. During World Cup or watching a live-streamed ping-pong tournament taking place at 3 in the morning. On the other hand, both companies have taken some recent hits to their stock prices. After noting slowed growth in 2026, The reason? The ascendance of an even more unfiltered version of online gambling, unrestricted by almost any laws or the boundaries of professional sports. Prediction Markets If FanDuel and DraftKings are the two names everyone knows in sports betting, prediction markets are ruled by Holly Market and Kalshi.

54:02John Oliver even did an episode about them, so you know they're on the rise. In prediction markets, a new gambling duopoly has begun. Will FanDuel and DraftKings try to grab a piece of it? Hmm. You bet.

54:24In this episode, we talked about suicide and depression. If you or someone you know is struggling with mental health, the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline can be reached by dialing 988. We also talked about gambling addiction. You can get help by calling or texting the National Problem Gambling Hotline. That's at 1-800-MY-RESET. 1-800-MY-RESET. Be sure to follow Business Wars on Audible or wherever you get your podcasts. And Audible subscribers can listen to new episodes of Business Wars one week early and ad-free right now. All you have to do is join Audible in the Audible app or by subscribing on Apple Podcasts.

55:10From Audible Originals, this is episode two of FanDuel vs. DraftKings for Business Wars. A quick note about recreations you've been hearing. In most cases, we can't know exactly what was said at the time. Those scenes are dramatizations, but they're based on research. And if you'd like to learn more, we recommend sports betting skyrocketed in pandemic. Experts Warn of a Ticking Time Bomb. That's by Rich Shapiro for NBC News. Also, reporting on the Terry Thompson case by David Gambacorda of the Philadelphia Inquirer. You can also listen to the audiobook Everybody Loses, The Tumultuous Rise of American Sports Gambling by Danny Funt, available now on Audible.

55:52I'm your host, David Brown. Katie Clark Gray wrote this story, voice acting by Chloe Elmore. Our senior producers are Jenny Bloom and Emily Frost. Karen Lowe is our producer emeritus. Fact-checking by Gabrielle Jolay. Our producer is Tristan Donovan of Yellow End. Our managing producer is Desi Blaylon. Sound design by Ryan Protesta. Kyle Randall is our lead sound designer. Executive producer for Audible, Jenny Lauer-Beckman. Head of creative development at Audible, Kate Naven. Head of Audible Originals North America, Marshall Louis. Chief content officer, Rachel Giazza. Copyright 2026 by Audible Originals, LLC.

56:30Sound recording copyright 2026 by Audible Originals, LLC.

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