Daily fantasy sports site DraftKings has spent more on television commercials than any other company in the U.S. in the past week, according to the media tracking site iSpot.tv.
DraftKings takes top spot
DraftKings has been in the top 10 in terms of estimated TV spend for the past couple of weeks, and had been at No. 2 or No. 3 this weekend, the opening week of the college football season.
An ad blitz in advance of the NFL season, which begins on Thursday, led to DraftKings assuming the No. 1 position, with just over $24 million spent. Here’s the screenshot from the iSpot.tv top 10 rankings:
The amount spent by DraftKings is about two and a half times more than the No. 5 entrant on the list — Ford — and nearly three times the amount spent by Nos. 6 through 10, a group that includes State Farm, McDonald’s and T-Mobile.
$100 million spent already this year
The data from the past week — combined with an estimate on TV ad spend for the first eight months of 2015 of $82 million — makes it appear that DraftKings has spent more than $100 million on commercials this year.
That’s a huge investment that has accompanied a new ad campaign, with actor Ed Norton doing the voice overs. A pair of new ads were recently rolled out after last Sunday’s launch which can be seen here and here.
The big question for DraftKings is if all the TV spend is resulting in new customers that are depositing and entering contests, and if those customers will continue to play after Week 1 of the NFL season. After paying out some overlay for contests based on Week 1 of the college season, there has been some question of how well DraftKings was doing on these fronts.
DraftKings needs more than 950,000 entries to fill its top two contests that start on Sunday (including the $10 million Millionaire Maker); it already has attracted nearly 300,000 entries for those. With just under a week until those contests lock, it seems like DraftKings has the momentum to fill them.
Right now, the massive ad campaign appears to be working as DraftKings attempts to wrest control of the DFS market decisively from FanDuel. And you’re likely to continue to see a lot of DraftKings commercials over the next week.
