Flutter CEO: Fox Bet US performance hampered by product quality
Peter Jackson says brand serves as good reminder of difficulties faced by most US operators when compared to market-leading FanDuel
Fox Bet’s growth in the US has been hampered by the quality of its product, Flutter Entertainment CEO Peter Jackson has said.
Although the FanDuel parent company did not break down Fox Bet’s performance in its full-year 2020 results, Eilers & Krejcik Gaming estimates the brand made up 1% of the New Jersey betting market in 2020.
Its growth throughout the year was relatively slow, launching only in Pennsylvania, and then in Michigan in January 2021.
“The quality of the product is hampering the ability for the business to get the traction it needs and it’s a really good reminder of what it’s like to be one of these scaling operators in America because we sometimes forget the difficulties they face when we look at FanDuel’s fantastic results,” Jackson said in response to analyst questions on the brand’s performance.
However, Jackson did say the Fox Bet Super 6 free-to-play (F2P) offering was performing well with approximately 4.5 million registered customers on the platform.
“It’s clearly going to be a really valuable database to cross-sell into,” Jackson said.
The chief exec confirmed Flutter’s commitment to give Rupert Murdoch’s Fox Corp the option to acquire 18.6% of FanDuel at fair market value by July 2021 as part of Flutter’s acquisition of The Stars Group in 2019.
“Fox will have to pay fair market value which is different from the value determined between Flutter and FastBall (former FanDuel investor),” Jackson said.
Fox also owns a 2.6% stake in Flutter.
Elsewhere, Jackson said he felt FanDuel’s online casino product could be improved after the group’s US-wide igaming market share slipped to 20% in 2020.
“We’ve been really surprised at the extent to which we’ve been able to drive and cross-sell around the casino market,” Jackson said.
“We have the best casino product in the world as a result of our acquisition of The Stars Group. We’re really pleased with that casino platform so we’ll be able to improve the casino product in the US, which as you’ve seen from our results is an important component of the US market,” he added.
Flutter CFO Jonathan Hill told analysts FanDuel’s cross-sell rates from sports to igaming had been largely similar to DraftKings’ 50% rate, as reported in the operator’s 2020 earnings results last week.