FanDuel CEO Amy Howe: ‘My whole career has been sliding doors moments’

13:46Jeff Berman:That was one of the biggest mistakes of my career, and it almost cost us the business. That's Hayden Wadsworth, Capital One business customer and co-founder of HydroJug, a reusable water bottle brand. And he's telling us how his insistence on sticking to the original product caused an 18-month dip in sales. I remember having a conversation with my brother. I was like, look, dude, we can stop stressing. Either the business isn't going to exist or the traveler absolutely hits it out of the park. In an effort to turn things around, Hayden decided to make a bold move by investing every dollar into a new improved 40-ounce traveler-sized water bottle.

14:24Jeff Berman:And we sold every unit in like an hour. It's crazy. So then we worked as fast as we could to do a 32-ounce, a 20-ounce, 14-ounce. It just took off. Hayden and the HydroJug team were able to navigate the financial ups and downs with the help of their partnership with Capital One Business and their relationship manager, Carly. Carly's always good. I can just shoot her a text. It's always been that type of relationship. And then the cash back is invaluable to us. That made it easy to really lean into the partnership with Capital One. To learn more, go to CapitalOne.com slash business cards. Business, and the ways we do it, are changing in ways that are both more subtle and more radical than you realize.

15:07Jeff Berman:Welcome to Compound Interest from Samo4 Business. I'm Liz Hoffman. And I'm Rohan Goswami. We've been covering the forces behind this revolution, but now we want to talk directly to the people driving that change. Each week, we'll talk to the operators, the experts, and the innovators to go beyond the headlines. We'll dig into everything from hospitality companies that no longer own hotels, to companies that will finance through sushi order. We'll unpack the transformation of how business and consumers engage with our economy and figure out what lies ahead. Listen to Compound Interest from Semifor Business wherever you get your podcasts.

15:41Jeff Berman:When you have a creative vision, you want total control from the first frame to the final render, which is why so many creative teams are using LTX2 from Lightrix. LTX2 is a next-generation open-source AI engine for audio and video built for teams who need production-ready quality and total control. It runs end-to-end creative workflows directly on your own device with 4K video, synchronized sound, and full creative flexibility. No bandwidth limits, no data leaving your machine, just the freedom to generate high-fidelity video with synchronized audio at roughly one-eighth the cost and one-seventh the rendering time of comparable tools.

16:26Jeff Berman:Start creating at ltx.io slash model.

16:33Jeff Berman:Welcome back to Masters of Scale. You can find this conversation and much more on our YouTube channel. And be sure to check out the link in the show notes to subscribe to our newsletter. Amy says the recent edition of Prediction Markets is a full circle moment for FanDuel.

16:50Amy Howe:A lot of people don't even know this, but the original founders of FanDuel, the product even before it became a daily fantasy sports product, was a prediction market product, an exchange. And the reason they ended up pivoting into daily fantasy sports is because the insight was all the volume was, a lot of the volume, right, was on sports. and so they ended up pivoting the product to a daily fantasy sports product. And it's interesting as somebody who has three boys and they for years have had their daily fantasy sports leagues and you know on Sunday they're watching Sunday Ticket with four different games when all I want to do is actually watch my Buffalo Bills.

17:27Jeff Berman:A bit of a masochistic endeavor but okay fair.

17:30Amy Howe:But you understand why fantasy sports and now sports betting are so powerful because everybody knows everything about the player stats and they're following, you know, every move that each of the different players are playing. And so before prop bets were even a thing in the U.S., you know, the daily fantasy sports business was really kind of paving the way for the business that we have today.

17:54Jeff Berman:The court issued the ruling it did in 2018. What did it unleash?

17:59Amy Howe:That was the moment where real money wagering, sports betting and iGaming was now legal and it was up to the states to decide, right? There was no longer a federal ban on online sports betting. So state by state, you could decide if you wanted to legalize sports betting and iGaming. And, you know, there were early advocates like Governor Christie, but there were, you know, New Jersey and Pennsylvania and, you know, Michigan and a number of states that legalized quite quickly. And what we found is that there was just phenomenal demand. And, you know, for us, we had a huge advantage because we had a very engaged set of users who were already using our daily fantasy sports product, right?

18:40And so we were able to migrate them over beautifully

18:43Amy Howe:to our online sports betting product. Now fast forward to 2026. We're sitting here Super Bowl weekend. There are 25 states, 50 % of the U.S. can bet legally online, but 50 % can't.

18:56Jeff Berman:Well, and there are loopholes that are being exploited all over the place, which I want to get to. But that created a dynamic where it emerged that there was effectively a duopoly in the marketplace, right? It was you all and another company that starts with a D, and we'll leave it at that.

19:12Amy Howe:Who we collaborate with all the time, right? I mean, we're part of a sports betting alliance. And that's one of the great things, by the way, about this industry is we work together to safely open up and regulate.

19:23Jeff Berman:Well, you're in competition, right? I mean, because the rising tide will lift all boats with a more permissive regulatory framework. So that makes a ton of sense. But you came in when it was still functionally a duopoly. What was it like coming into a marketplace where you're going head-to-head with a competitor, where I'm trying to remember 2020, 2021, what customer acquisition costs were in your category, but they were astronomical. What was that like in that moment for you?

19:51Amy Howe:Well, it's interesting because you're right. In the early days, there was a lot of money spent on marketing, but there was a lot of learnings along the way, right? trying to figure out what league deals do you need to do? What teams do you want to partner with? What media stations do you want to align with? And how do we think about the role of TV versus digital? And I think we brought a lot of sophistication and discipline to that in the very early days. And that served us well over the years.

20:16Jeff Berman:So you referenced the emergence of prediction markets. This has been explosive growth over the last year, 18 months. How is that changing, first, the competitive landscape, and second, how you're leading FanDuel?

20:29Amy Howe:Yeah, I think the important thing to remember is the North Star is still to legalize and offer our industry-leading sports betting product in every state we can, right? It's a superior offering. We love prediction markets in the states that aren't legal because it gives us a nice complementary offering, but it has. It has shifted the landscape. As a CEO, it's a constant reminder that you have to be able to be agile and pivot as the landscape evolves. And one of the things that I think Fandle has done a very good job of is there's been uncertainty, as we've been talking about through this conversation, for well over a decade.

21:05Amy Howe:And so we know how to navigate that uncertainty. We're in a volatile business to begin with, right? The nature of what we do is uncertain and volatile. And so there's a certain DNA that we have, but you also have to figure out how to build agility into your business model in the organization.

21:21Jeff Berman:We're having this conversation in the great state of California. I cannot use your core product in California. Why not?

21:29Amy Howe:So California is a very ripe topic. And let me just to contextualize the question. Think about this. There is easily a$10 billion illegal market in California. The demand is there, right? You've got 13 % of the population, and that's probably a conservative number. The reason you can't is because it needs to be—we tried to get it on the ballot in 22, and we weren't successful. We are working very successfully right now with and through the tribes. At the end of the day, the most important driver of legalizing sports betting in California will be working with the tribes to make sure that we can protect tribal sovereignty.

22:08Amy Howe:There are well over 100 tribes in the state of California. And we learned our lesson in the 22 election. You know, we tried to align with them and we weren't successful. Coming out of that, we completely rebooted our strategy. I hired folks who came from the tribes and so they're working alongside. But we know we need to, you know, spend a lot of time listening. We were on an extended apology tour. and we're working with them right now to figure out how do we safely open up California in a way that works for them. And ultimately, I'm cautiously optimistic that we'll get there, but we'll do it on their timeline.

22:44Jeff Berman:I'm just not sure that it's intuitive for everyone why legalizing online sports betting would be a threat to tribal sovereignty.

22:54Amy Howe:Well, if you think about it, their primary existence is brick and mortar casinos, right? And I think it was, you know, one of the eye-opening moments for me after we weren't successful in November of 22 was COVID was one of the, an existential threat to their business, right? It was the first time that brick and mortar casinos were, I think, ever really shut down for an extended period of time. As you think about that and you think about the role of the tribes is to make sure that they can provide for future generations. They rightly so, although we have lots of data to refute it, but they view legalizing sports betting as a potentially slippery slope to legalizing iGaming, which their concern could cannibalize their brick and mortar business.

23:39And we do have lots of evidence that online gaming does not.

23:42Amy Howe:However, at the end of the day, you know, they're the most critical constituent in California. And so, you know, we've been working very closely with them. But that's really the core reason, right? And, you know, not only do we have to get the tribes comfortable, but it has to successfully have a majority vote in the state of California.

24:02Jeff Berman:And when you're working on something like this, which really is not just a FanDuel challenge, this is an industry-wide challenge, how are you interfacing with the other players in the space so that ideally your interests can be aligned and you can work with the tribes for the best outcome for everyone, including the tribes, including your business, your customers, and for Californians?

24:22Amy Howe:It's a very unique industry, right? Because there aren't that many industries where you are competing head to head with a number of different operators. But at the same time, you have to collaborate, right, to safely open up the market. So we have an organization that's called the Sports Betting Alliance. And most of the legal regulated online operators are part of this. And we work as an organization to safely, you know, lobby and work with the key stakeholders may vary state to state, but the role of the SBA is to make sure that we can provide the necessary support and infrastructure to, you know, to legalize and open up the state.

24:57Amy Howe:And, you know, for the audience that may not understand why is it important to legalize sports betting, because, you know, this habit has existed for years, it's, you know, I'd say a few things. One is, as a legal online operator, I'm licensed in every state that we're in. We have to verify that you are who you say you are. You can't engage in real money wagering unless until you're 21 years old. So we're protecting underage gambling. We're providing safeguards to consumers, right? Responsible gaming. But importantly, we're providing revenue for the states, right? Since PASPA was repealed or since we started to operate in the U.S., Vandals generated over$6 billion in tax revenue for the states.

25:39Amy Howe:And that goes to causes of the, you know, that are important to the states, whether it's first responders or mental health or education. And that's a meaningful number, right? But if we were to open up the remaining states, there's easily another$1.6 billion per year that the states could generate.

25:55Jeff Berman:We each have three kids. They're roughly in the same age range. My youngest is now 16. He's my avid sports fan. He obviously cannot have his own account. But I have one, and I would rather work with him on what I don't believe is an oxymoron, which is responsible gaming. But it does give rise to a serious conversation here about the risks here, right? We've got huge risks with addiction. We have risks of people way overspending their means. We're in the middle of a loneliness epidemic in this country, and taking these behaviors online only contributes to that. I'm curious, first, when you took the job or when you were considering taking the job, how that played in, how do you handle that?

26:41Amy Howe:Well, I actually thought a lot about it before I took the job, and I had a conversation with my husband. And I thought as a female CEO who has three boys who, you know, I could see that, you know, at the time they were obviously quite a bit younger. They're now teenagers. But I knew how much they loved daily fantasy sports. And you could see where, you know, ultimately this might go. At the end of the day, the most important thing, we are building a business for the long term, right? And if we don't continue to earn the trust of our, not just our core customers, but all of our stakeholders, which are, you know, the state regulators, it's the leagues, it's the teams, it's everybody that works in this ecosystem, we're not going to have a successful business in the long run.

27:27Amy Howe:And I'm really proud of what we've done. I truly believe that we're not just the market leader from a commercial perspective, but we are leading the market from a responsible gaming perspective. You know, if you look at our global parent company, Flutter Entertainment, we've spent easily over$100 million a year on responsible gaming tools, on educating and creating awareness around this. And I will tell you, as the mom of three boys, I feel an even greater obligation because I go to college campuses. You know, you go to Texas that also is not legal. And betting is rampant.

28:04Jeff Berman:Yeah. Grateful that you do that. And I really hope a male CEO would do the same and take that obligation equally seriously. And I appreciate that perspective as a mom, but male CEOs don't get off the hook on that.

28:16Amy Howe:Fair. You're absolutely right.

28:18Jeff Berman:You are an athlete. You were a competitive athlete growing up. There's remarkable data on the correlation at a minimum between women in the C-suite and being involved in competitive athletics growing up. But I'm curious about how your experience as a competitive athlete has informed your professional career.

28:39Amy Howe:It's shaped me a lot as a leader, as a professional, as a team member. I was a competitive gymnast growing up. I was a swimmer. I played tennis. And I think you learn a lot from sports. It's one of the things that my husband and I have instilled in all of our boys. I think there is a certain humility you learn when you lose. I think you learn how to win with integrity and professionalism. You learn how to be a leader of a team. You learn how to, you know, how to figure out how to build a high-performing team. As we were joking earlier, you can't create a team of all quarterbacks. That doesn't work.

29:17Amy Howe:And, you know, then, of course, when you grow up as a professional, not a professional athlete, but a competitive athlete, you learn that you want to be number one, right? There's a sense of competition and drive that comes with growing up as an athlete. And I think I've taken all of those elements into, you know, ultimately becoming a CEO. I'd never set out to be a CEO, but here I am and I absolutely love it. But I think those early days of being an athlete were actually quite instrumental.

29:49Jeff Berman:Several years ago, my last company, I was part of the team that helped launch a company called Together, where Alex Morgan, Sue Bird, Chloe Kim, and Simone Manuel were our founding, the much more important founders of that company. And we had a belief that this boom-bust cycle that we've seen in professional women's sports, we were exiting that and we were entering a more sustained rise in it, which we've really seen over the last six, seven years, give or take. I have been of the belief that one of the things that can really accelerate the growth of women's sports is gambling. One, because they tend to be taking place in the offseason for the most popular betting sports among men's sports.

30:30Jeff Berman:Has the Caitlin Clark effect been real for FanDuel? How have you seen the growth of women's sports since you've been in the chair of FanDuel?

30:37Amy Howe:The Caitlin Clark effect has definitely been real. In fact, I think that we saw a, you know, several hundred percent increase in WNBA betting when she came on the scene. But I think this is, as you can imagine, this is something that was near and dear to my heart when I stepped into the CEO role. And I think about it as, you know, there's this kind of three different pillars to it. One is providing equity in the product, right? So if you looked at our WMBA product years ago, it was not nearly as good as our MBA product, right? So making sure that we've got a betting product that is as good as, you know, the equivalent men product.

31:14Amy Howe:Second, partnering up with female athletes and leagues, right? We were one of the first sponsors of the WNBA. We've had a number of amazing female ambassadors that are part of our team. And I will say we still have work to do, right? I mean, if you look at the data, NFL is a great example. Closer to 40 % of, you know, this, right? NFL consumers are women, and we're not nearly where we need to be in terms of the percentage of bettors that are women. But, you know, sometimes the sports betting product is overly complicated, not for just for women, but for men as well. And so as we continue to really advance technology and think about how we leverage AI and Gen AI to personalize the experience and make it more intuitive and simple, I think that's going to be a real unlock for targeting more women in the category.

32:03Jeff Berman:And that's a perfect segue as we sit here Super Bowl week 2026 having this conversation. We almost have to talk about AI. You're in an interesting position in that you can leverage AI to improve your business, improve your products. And also you have to think defensively about the use of AI to game your system, I imagine. How are you approaching each of those? I think you have to approach it with a fair bit of humility that you don't know everything,

32:28Amy Howe:but a significant amount of intellectual curiosity to make sure that you can provide the right environment for your team to embrace it and learn and get up to speed. Some of the areas that I'm most excited about are how we can use the technology to really improve the fan experience, but also build more trust into the product, right? So we've got it, just as one example, we've got a product called Ace AI, which is effectively think about it as a betting companion. So instead of consumers used to leave the site or the app and they'd go and do all their research on stats and look at odds and figure out what do they want to bet on, what kind of parlay do they want to build, and then they'd come back into the app.

33:08Amy Howe:Well, you can do that all within Ace AI seamlessly and place your bed right within that interface. So that's just one example. There's an infinite opportunity to figure out how we leverage that technology. But we're also really proud of how we're using AI to build trust into the product. And what I mean by that is we're using what we call real-time check-in tools. So we have built very sophisticated models that are leveraging, you know, large language models and a lot of data and science to say, you know, gosh, I'm seeing some signs of change in behavior that may not be normal. We ought to do a check-in and make sure that everything is okay, right?

33:46Amy Howe:And so that's the kind of, and when we talk about at the end of the day, building a business that is sustainability for the long term, these are the types of things that are really important.

33:56Jeff Berman:What about defensively? Are you worried about people almost weaponizing AI with regard to your platform?

34:01Amy Howe:Listen, there's always, I mean, you always have sharp customers. The technology is very good for facilitating research and being able to compare odds more effectively across the platform. But we don't think it's going to give you a mathematical edge.

34:15Jeff Berman:Yeah. I want to go back to prediction markets for just a moment. Are there things that we shouldn't be able to bet on? Yes.

34:24Amy Howe:Absolutely. When we set out to think about how we wanted to enter prediction markets, one of the important things for us was we wanted to make sure we had a partner that was philosophically aligned and had the same core principles as us. And that's why we ended up partnering with the Chicago Mercantile Exchange. And I can tell you, Terry Duffy, the CEO of the CME Group, and I spent a lot of time talking about that. You know, I'm not going to comment on what other players have decided to offer or not. What I can tell you is what we are doing is bringing the same level of integrity to the markets that we're going to offer.

35:00Amy Howe:If you offer a market that can be easily manipulated, we're not going to offer the market, right? So we are consciously choosing maybe to be a bit slower and more cautious to make sure that the markets that we do are legitimate and above board. At the end of the day, you know, the CFTC will determine these guardrails, and we're very excited. We're going to be meeting with the new chairman, Michael Selig, and I think there's a lot of value that we can bring to those conversations because we've been operating in a market for a very long time with proper safeguards for the consumer, but also an ecosystem that can manage the integrity of sports betting.

35:37Amy Howe:And I think we can bring a lot of that thinking to prediction markets. Right.

35:40Jeff Berman:And I think the corollary to whether it can be easily manipulated is what are the consequences of it being manipulated? Are there life and death consequences? Will a country lose its sovereignty? I mean, and so I appreciate that these are real conversations and that the answer to that question is that there are some things that we should not be able to bet on. your oldest is in college, you go visit and one of the classmates says, I'm really like excited about entering the workforce and I'm also incredibly trepidatious because boy, this is all changing really quickly. What's the advice you're giving that young person when they ask you?

36:17Amy Howe:It's funny because I reflect on what it was like when I was graduating, when you were graduating, and there's a lot of pressure on kids nowadays. My advice is give yourself time to get exposure to a lot of different things, right? When you're 19, 20, 21 years old, how do you know what you want to do, right? I happened to go into consulting really because it was a sliding door moment. I thought I was going to actually go back and take over my dad's family business. That was a terrible business. And so I ended up going into consulting and lo and behold, got exposure to a lot of different things.

36:52Amy Howe:When you're young, what you don't have is exposure and pattern recognition yet. And so finding ways to figure out, you know, give yourself some time to figure out what you want to do. For me, consulting was great because I got a lot of exposure to different industries, different types of problems. You get your learning curve is very steep, but there's a lot of different ways to have a career. The other thing I would say is, you know, for me, I'm sure for you as well, my whole career has been sliding door moments, right? those unexpected turns that take you in one direction. And I think one of the things that's been really helpful for me is I was always willing to walk through doors that were open for me, that I wasn't necessarily planning on walking through.

37:37But once I did, it opened up a whole

37:39Amy Howe:new world. And so sometimes you might know exactly what you want to do, and that's great, and that's the path you're on. But a lot of times, you know, you don't know. And so spend the time, be intellectually curious, and definitely spend time building a network because, you know, as it turns out, careers are very long and you never know how those relationships will come back and factor in.

38:01Jeff Berman:And those human connections cannot be displaced by AI.

38:05Amy Howe:That is exactly right. That's exactly right.

38:07Jeff Berman:Great place to wrap. Thank you, Amy.

38:09Amy Howe:Thank you.

38:10Jeff Berman:Thanks again to Amy Howe for joining us as more and more Americans bet on sports, play casino-style games and wade into prediction markets all from their phones, Smart Money says this industry will continue its astronomical rise. That said, to get through this without exacerbating crises, we will need experienced leaders like Amy who are poised to lead us into that future with a focus on creating sustainable, responsible companies. I'm Jeff Berman. Thank you for listening.

38:43Amy Howe:We were awarded this incredible contract to put on an event for 2 ,000 people. The budget was around$1.5 million. It was a black tie event.

38:54Jeff Berman:There was a jazz band playing and a cigar bar and a bourbon bar. That's Natasha Miller, Capital One business customer and CEO of Entire Productions, a corporate event management company. And she's telling us how she had to float a large contract for nine months.

39:09Amy Howe:It was really hard since we were carrying that$1.5 million, most of which passed through to pay for the venue and all the vendors and all the food and beverage.

39:19Jeff Berman:It's this waterfall effect. Thankfully, we were able to handle that with the Capital One credit cards, which have a 2 % cash back on everything. For Natasha, it wasn't just the financial support from Capital One Business, but the personal investment as well. I had incredible support from my personal banker, Callie.

39:41Amy Howe:I knew that at any point I was in trouble that I can call her, which I've never had before in a bank, ever.

39:48Jeff Berman:With the help of Callie and her Capital One business card, Natasha was able to stretch every dollar in order to bring this monumental event to life. To learn more, go to CapitalOne.com slash business cards. While everyone was debating whether or not Bitcoin was an asset for their portfolio, CoinShares was quietly building the foundation to invest in it properly. CoinShares launched the world's first Bitcoin ETP back in 2015. Today, they manage nearly$6 billion and are profitable through multiple market cycles. CoinShares has publicly traded on NASDAQ Stockholm and announced in September it is seeking a U.S.

40:26Jeff Berman:listing. CoinShares is the one-stop shop for digital asset investment, passive ETFs, active strategies, and mining exposure. Every approach built to institutional standards. CoinShares. The adults have arrived. Learn more at coinshares.com. Masters of Scale is a Wait What original. Our executive producer is Eve Trow. Our senior producer is Tricia Bobita. Associate producer is Masha Makatonina. Senior talent executive is Stephanie Stern. Mixing and mastering by Aaron Bestinelli and Brian Pugh. Original music by Ryan Holiday. Our head of podcasts is Lital Mollad. Visit mastersofscale.com to find the transcript for this episode and to subscribe to our newsletter.

41:18Jeff Berman:And please make sure to check out our YouTube channel.

41:25Thank you.