The two leaders in Daily Fantasy Sports continue to see drops in their total weekly entry fees following increasing scrutiny by some state Attorney General’s offices as well as lottery and gaming commissions.
“FanDuel, DraftKings, and Yahoo all suffered small dips in total entry fees, but they balanced the books accordingly with reduced prizes out totals,” SuperLobby said in its weekly data release. “This means improved effective margins for the big guns — all three will likely feel satisfied with their NFL Week 9 Sunday results.”
That being said, both DFS kingpins did see improved week-over-week revenue numbers. DraftKings net revenue was coming in at $2.1 million, an increase from $1.9 million the week before. FanDuel’s enjoyed revenues closer to $3 million for the past week.
But for players, some believe that the patronizing of Daily Fantasy Sports sites is akin to throwing hard earned money down the toilet.
Ladd Biro of the Inquirer is one such critic.
You have about as much chance of winning a weekly DraftKings jackpot as you do of winning your state’s lottery, since the “game” is dominated by deep-pocketed “sharks” who enter hundreds, sometimes thousands, of lineups with a dizzying array of player combinations using statistical algorithms specifically built to tilt the odds in their favor.
This concept is a complicated one if you happen to be anything but a shark. Biro offers up a simple example:
This weekend, you probably thought you’d be in the money if you started Marcus Mariota, DeAngelo Williams and Antonio Brown. But the sharks not only had those three, they played a few dozen variations that enabled them to randomly hit on Lamar Miller, Sammy Watkins, Cole Beasley and Delanie Walker, too.
And like many others in America, Biro has tired of all the DraftKings and FanDuel ads, which have dominated the airwaves throughout this NFL season thanks in no small part to the massive cash infusion pumped in by investors heading into September.
Stand up, America! Let’s take back the game we love and return to a more civil world in which game-day broadcasts are brought to us by beer, pizza and erectile dysfunction ads. The way our Founding Fathers intended.
– Aaron Goldstein, DFS911.com