Here we are, several years down the line and Daily Fantasy Sports (DFS) companies are still making headlines around the globe. This time the DFS company in the spotlight is Global Daily Fantasy Sports (GDFS), a B2B solution for online gambling operators targeting regulated European markets and wishing to offer their customers a solid DFS product.
There are already several established consumer-facing DFS brands successfully operating in Europe such as Mondogoal and Oulala, but the beauty of GDFS’s disruptive concept is the shared liquidity network model. GDFS’s “multi-tenant gateway” will easily enable operators to entice and re-engage their customers with an exciting new product and large jackpots right off the bat.
“We’re doing something a little differently, we’re going to be doing strictly a B2B facing platform, we’re going to introduce that into Europe and we’re going to set it up more as individual white labels, we’re going to set it up as a network, similar to what they did with poker back in the early 2000s”, explained Darcy Krogh, CEO of GDFS.
He continued, “Where regulation permits, we’re going to have a multi-tenant platform where hopefully we can share liquidity and have larger prize pools in that market and we’re very excited to launch it, we’re going to try and launch it October of this year”.
The deal recently putting GDFS on the map was its announcement of a strategic partnership with NYX, one of the online gambling industry’s leading software providers, revealed on July 29, 2016. Thanks to NYX’s high profile clients such as Bet365, William Hill and Paddy Power, GDFS will easily be able to distribute its platform with the help of NYX and ultimately reach millions of European players.
“We’ve got a very aggressive build-out happening right now, as you’re aware we’ve got a great distribution deal with NYX gaming and we’re hoping to take this platform through them to all their customers this fall”, Krogh confirmed.
The question still looms if DFS will take off in Europe like it has in North America, mainly because the UK and a number of countries in Europe have enjoyed regulated online sports betting for years and North America most certainly has not. These circumstances leave us to wonder, can DFS actually thrive alongside wide-spread regulated online sports betting?
Krogh most certainly believes the answer is “yes”.
“I think over the last ten years other than going digital and probably in-play betting, there hasn’t been much innovation around the actual sport betting product. I think [DFS] is a great customer engagement too, acquisition tool, and something very different that [operators] can take to their players”, Krogh explained.
In addition to acting as an acquisition tool, a DFS offering can also serve as a reactivation tool, especially for a market full of online gambling operators with enormous databases.
“[DFS is] a great new idea or concept for engagement and acquisition and actual rejuvenation too. If you look at most of the operators, I believe even their active users are probably somewhere around 20% of their registered users so this is a great idea or product for them to take in and actually get people engaged in sports betting”, shared Krogh.
“I think it’s a great bolt-on product that [operators] can bring into the market and something that, again, we think is going to have a lot of traction in Europe”, he said.
While we’re unsure exactly how popular DFS will become in European markets, we do know these markets will be much easier to navigate from a regulatory perspective. Just think of the millions of dollars North American facing DFS brands such as Draft Kings and Fan Duel have already had to fork out in lawyer fees and the like.
“I’ve done business in Europe for seventeen years on the B2B side, so the reason why I think Europe is a good market for us is regulation is very clear, licensing is very clear, so we don’t have the difficulties a lot of the North American facing fantasy sports companies are having right now. I know there are a lot of different legal battles going on there, but we don’t have that problem. The licensing regime is very clear and that’s a market we want to focus on”, said Krogh.
