A sampling of daily fantasy football contests from Sunday provides some insight inside how much revenue FanDuel and DraftKings are generating in the middle of the NFL season, in both cases more than seven figures a week.
Numbers at DraftKings, FanDuel
A look at a sampling of the publicly viewable NFL Sunday contests at the two major daily fantasy sports sites — both guaranteed prize pools (GPP) and non-guaranteed “cash games” — points to the fact that weekly revenue is well in excess of seven figures each week.
These figures did not come from DraftKings and FanDuel, and would not be verified by either operator. The figures represent a large sampling of contests from Sunday, but do not include all NFL contests or contests from other sports (i.e. NBA, NHL). They merely point to how much money is flowing through the DFS operators at a snapshot in time.
- FanDuel: $15 million in entry fees; $12.8 million in prizes awarded; $2.2 million revenue.
- DraftKings: $20.7 million in entry fees; $18.9 million in prizes; $1.8 million revenue.
Both sites are generally generating revenue — surpassing the “break-even” point — on most of their GPP contests, and in many cases filling them.
Both sites also give out an undetermined number of free entries to users, which would affect the “entry fee” figure and eat into the final “revenue” number.
Not just that for revenue at DraftKings and FanDuel
While Sunday is the biggest day for DraftKings and FanDuel in terms of entry fees and users, it’s far from the entire picture. A large swath of the revenue at DraftKings and FanDuel will also come from NBA contests each week.
Legal Sports Report also has no insight into how much traffic is coming into the sites via other means, namely private contests. Both DraftKings (Leagues) and FanDuel (Friends mode) have made a push to get their users playing more via non-public contests.
DraftKings, for its part, did tell LSR that:
- Private game play is up 90 percent over last year.
- Twenty percent of NFL customers are playing in private games.
- More than for 42 percent of NFL customers are playing in formats other than the public GPPs.
A year ago at DraftKings and FanDuel
Here’s what figures for GPPs only looked like according to data provided by the tracking site SuperLobby during NFL Week 8 in 2015:
[DraftKings]took in $21.5 million in entry fees, down from $22.7 million the previous week. But it remained in positive territory in revenue generated from entry fees, paying out an estimated $19.6 million, down from $20.1 million the week before. That translates to $1.9mm in revenue this week on NFL GPPs only.
FanDuel dropped to an estimated $18.3 million in entry fees for its NFL GPPs from $19.1 million the week before. FanDuel paid out $17.1 million for its GPPs, up from $15.9 million the week before. That translates to $1.2mm in revenue this week.
What’s next at DraftKings and FanDuel
A potential merger between the two companies was termed as “imminent” just over a week ago, and appears likely to happen sometime this coming week or next.
For now, however, they continue on as entirely separate companies for NFL Week 9.
DraftKings is guaranteeing three contests in excess of $1 million, including the $4 million Millionaire Maker. FanDuel has two guarantees over a million, led by its $1.25 million Sunday Million.
DraftKings has also announced some of its contests for Week 10, including eight contests that will guarantee more than $10 million.
