Horizon\u2019s team-up with Havas<\/a>.<\/p>\nThis conversation has been edited and condensed for length and clarity.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s two-fold. The NBA is a critically important sport to our business. We knew we needed a tier-one partnership with a national broadcaster. Why Amazon? Well, our cultures are really well aligned; we\u2019re both tech companies, both really obsessed with great customer experiences. [And] Amazon has proven [itself a] fantastic sports broadcaster. It wasn\u2019t that long ago that they were airing Thursday Night Football for the first time. People were curious how that would go; I think it\u2019s been a home run.<\/p>\n
Look, I won\u2019t share the specific economics of the deal, but we were very pleased with the value this partnership represents. I don\u2019t know exactly what other deals in the marketplace are\u2026. [but] FanDuel has a great history of being financially disciplined. We are leaning into this partnership in a material way [and] it\u2019s one of the largest partnerships that we have.<\/p>\n
This is a graphical interface that you can toggle to; an \u201cOdds View\u201d which shows relevant information about the live odds of the game. You can choose to authenticate your FanDuel account, so you can track your specific bets. We have a similar partnership [since October] with Main Street sports, which has a lot of local basketball, hockey and baseball games. But this will be the first time a national broadcaster has done anything like this.<\/p>\n
Having this device [he holds up a smartphone] talk to the big screen in your living room, we think, is really illustrative of the future of potentially all TV viewing, particularly sports.<\/p>\n
Generally speaking, when people engage in value-adding interactions like this, they both watch the game more and for longer periods of time, and they bet on and engage with FanDuel at higher rates. Which is exactly what both sides of the partnership want.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The NBA is already your most popular sport for betting. Why not look to other sports and grow revenue there?<\/p>\n
[In] any business you\u2019re looking for where customer demand is and maximizing your service of that customer demand. That\u2019s not to say we aren\u2019t very interested in sports where we think there\u2019s a growth opportunity in the \u2018States, soccer being one. But we can do both. We can invest in more blue-ocean territory but also \u2014 stretching the analogy \u2014 fish where the fish are.<\/p>\n
Everything from out-of-home to social media and programmatic and podcasting. We will be meaningfully active as we come up to tip off\u2026 it\u2019ll be a full-stack media mix across top funnel, mid funnel, bottom funnel channels. We work with influencers from the kind of top tier folks like Rob Gronkowski and Bill Simmons; we have a robust influencer program.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Is X still as important for sports marketing?<\/p>\n
I\u2019d say one of X\u2019s killer value props is live sports and discussion about sports. I\u2019ve actually described FanDuel as one of the most successful second screen experiences in the world. [X] is one of the other most successful second screen experiences in the world when it comes to sports dialogue.<\/p>\n
NBA viewership was a little bit down last year \u2014 is that a concern?<\/p>\n
It was. We see ourselves as positive members of the sports ecosystem, including our official partnership with the league. We\u2019ve had a lot of conversations with them about how we make sure people are as engaged and interested in the NBA as possible. I think this new suite of media partnerships with Amazon, NBC and ESPN is a really powerful moment for those broadcasters, as well as the league itself.<\/p>\n
The WNBA\u2019s brought new brands to basketball. Does its growth translate to betting engagement for FanDuel?<\/p>\n
It definitely doesn\u2019t attract the same level as the NBA. But it\u2019s a meaningful part of the business, and in terms of absolute volumes, significant. There are days, particularly in the summer, where it\u2019s the biggest sport on the platform. We\u2019ve leaned into investment. We have a partnership with the [Indiana] Fever. We have a partnership with the WNBA itself. It\u2019s an area of growth that we\u2019re excited about.<\/p>\n
Bill [Koenigsberg, Horizon\u2019s founder] and I caught up last week. I was excited for him. I think it\u2019s a great opportunity for them as they think about their global platform \u2014 similarly with Havas [it\u2019s] a real opportunity as they think about the U.S. market. It\u2019s a smart tie up.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Amazon shouldn\u2019t struggle to draw interest. Other players have sold out; NBC Universal has lined up 170 advertisers…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":196654,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[434],"tags":[49,48,97478,459,82],"class_list":["post-196653","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nba","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-marketing-in-sports","tag-nba","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/196653","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=196653"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/196653\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/196654"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=196653"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=196653"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=196653"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}