Why DFS will never succeed in the European market
Liam Casey has consulted with betonexperts and is currently working with Stars Group focusing on marketing innovation, commercial performance and optimal structures for growth
DFS exists in its current guise due to one reason. That reason is 13 October 2006 – the day that UIGEA was signed into law. Fantasy sports received a specific carve out within the last-minute bill, which focused on skill as the predominant factor that allows companies to operate in a grey area which has left the actual legality of DFS up to individual states to decide.
The first actual DFS companies began to spring up from early 2007 onwards, rushing in to fill the sports gap left by the withdrawal of sports betting operators. The household names of FanDuel and DraftKings built significant volume fast, but the attractiveness of their product and proposition (to the European sports betting market) was summarised by FanDuel withdrawing at short notice from the UK market recently.
DFS doesn’t work in Europe for a simple reason. The bread and butter opportunities for sports bettors of every type are single bets on single games or outcomes and small accumulators for the more casual gambler. This isn’t possible in DFS. If I can’t have a simple bet to win on my favourite team, you have no way of acquiring me as a customer.
I know of multiple EU sports betting companies that have looked long and hard at fantasy sports in general, done their background testing, and its only really the ones with significant scale and resources, as well as long term designs on the US that have made any commitment to the DFS vertical.
General industry opinion is that when sports betting does become legal in the US (on a state by state basis), that it’ll be those companies that have had “good citizen” fantasy sports businesses that will be top of the queue to get state licences. Until then, European adoption is little but…a fantasy.