Leading Daily Fantasy Sports site DraftKings has entered into a lucrative ad deal with ESPN in which it plans to pay the sports network $250 million over the next two years.
This news comes just one month after ESPN parent company was set to pay DraftKings $250 million as part of an investment deal. They backed out last minute.
As part of that deal, DraftKings was initially to spend $500 million on advertising with ESPN. That arrangement has since been restructured.
Re/code has learned from multiple sources that top Disney executives ultimately got cold feet because of branding concerns. Disney wasn’t willing to stake its nearly-century old, family-friendly reputation on a company that’s building a business on what some would argue is a legalized form of sports gambling.
– Aaron Goldstein, Gambling911.com