FanDuel CEO Admits: Maybe They Might Have Overdone It A Bit With The TV Ads

For several weeks during the recently concluded NFL season, either FanDuel or DraftKings were the top spenders on TV advertising, interrupting seemingly every show to tout how easy it is for the average Joe to win big at daily fantasy sports (assuming that the “average Joe” is in the elite tier of DFS players). That doesn’t include official sponsorship deals with teams, TV networks, and pro sports leagues (or that shoehorned-in DraftKings-sponsored subplot during the final season of The League). Looking back on it now, the CEO of FanDuel confesses that maybe they should tone it down a bit with the advertising going forward.

Speaking yesterday at the Re/code Code/Media conference, FanDuel CEO Nigel Eccles said that the recent onslaught of TV advertising was successful at reaching the core audience for DFS, but that it had the unintended effect of annoying people who had no interest in playing.

“There’s nothing more interesting in life than your fantasy football team, but there’s nothing less interesting in life than your buddy’s fantasy football team,” Eccles explained. “I think what we did was we reminded you about your buddy’s fantasy football team every fifteen seconds for several months.”

Eccles also admitted that going full-throttle with these ads might have had a little bit to do with the fact that multiple attorneys general around the country are now investigating whether or not DFS sites are illegal gambling operations.

As a result, the CEO says “We’re definitely going to spend differently [on ads], it probably won’t be as much.”

So, in that regard, maybe we are all big winners thanks to FanDuel?

Just for giggles, let’s take another look at the DFS ad that John Oliver, et al, created a few months back:

