The third week of the NFL season saw DraftKings open up a wider gap on daily fantasy sports competitor FanDuel, at least in terms of entry fees.
The top-line figures at DraftKings and FanDuel
According to a sampling of the publicly viewable NFL contests from Sept. 18-24, DraftKings realized more than $3.3 million in revenue. The sample included guaranteed prize pools (GPP) and non-guaranteed contests, but not head-to-head contests.
Meanwhile, the site generated more than $29 million in entry fees, aka handle.
A week earlier, FanDuel had been closer to DraftKings on both fronts. But this past week DraftKings far outpaced FanDuel’s handle (about $17 million) for a comparable sample in Week 3. And the revenue gap was about as stark as had been witnessed in recent memory — more than a million dollars difference ($2.1 million at FanDuel.)
The above figures do not include revenue or handle from other sports. For the second straight week, there were more than eight million entries made across the two sites for NFL contests.
Sunday only
The gap was narrower when including a sample of only contests that started on Sunday:
- DraftKings: $23 million handle, $2.6 million revenue
- FanDuel $15 million handle, $1.7 million revenue
Looking ahead to NFL Week 4
With the fourth week of daily fantasy football looming, there has been some discontent about changes to rake and contest construction at the sites.
Things move forward, nonetheless, and the picture painted is still of a much bigger DraftKings. It downsized the Millionaire Maker by $250,000 to $4.25 million guaranteed.
FanDuel, meanwhile, dropped the Sunday Million guarantee to $2 million (down $750,000).
Beyond that, DraftKings offers four contests with guarantees surpassing seven figures, vs. just one at FanDuel. Here are the five biggest contests at each:
| DraftKings | FanDuel | |
|---|---|---|
| Contest guarantee (entry fee) | $4.25 million ($20) | $2 million ($7) |
| Contest guarantee (entry fee) | $1.6 million ($333) | $700,000 ($33) |
| Contest guarantee (entry fee) | $1.6 million ($3) | $700,000 ($150) |
| Contest guarantee (entry fee) | $1.6 million ($5) | $600,000 ($333) |
| Contest guarantee (entry fee) | $850,000 ($5,300) | $400,000 ($4) |
Prior weeks for NFL at DraftKings and FanDuel
Editor’s note: FanDuel’s handle numbers were updated to reflect an error in Legal Sports Report’s sample
