UK growth spurs DraftKings’ international expansion plans

DraftKings plans to launch in several new international markets in 2017, following promising early returns from its UK product.

Speaking in a Facebook Live Q&A this week, DraftKings chief executive Jason Robins said the firm was “really excited” by the early results from the UK, eight months after launching in the market.

“For whatever reason, some people expected it to be the same size as the US, but of course things take time to grow and the UK is already significantly ahead of where the US was in its first year,” Robbins said.

“And that’s in a country a fifth of the size of the US and that’s only gotten us even more bullish on expanding into the rest of the world.”

Robbins added: “We absolutely will be expanding into other parts of Europe and other parts of the world too. We don’t know exactly which ones and that’s something the CIO is still working on. We’ll have some announcements soon on that.”

DraftKings launched its UK platform back in February and received some criticism from UK fans for what they saw as a simple transportation of the US product, with prices in dollars and terms like salary-cap reflecting the “Americanised” nature of the product.

However, the UK platform has since received significant investment, with the purchase of TransferKing’s player database and a recent engagement campaign to better understand what UK players want.

The viability of the European market for DFS is still uncertain. Yahoo recently launched in the UK, and soccer-focused operator Oulala closed a successful funding round, but Mondogoal was recently forced to shutter its B2C operation and pivot to a B2B offering.

Robbins was also asked about the company’s forthcoming merger with FanDuel, but said it was too early to say how the details would be worked out with regards to a shared site or platform.

“We just don’t have answers to that yet. We promise that all of the decisions that will be made will be really well-thought out,” Robbins added.