Unlike in the 2015 National Football League (NFL), American football fans will see less of daily fantasy sports (DFS) operator FanDuel’s advertisements this season.
Realizing that they have overdone the bombardment of ads last year, Business Insider reported that FanDuel is changing its advertising strategy this NFL season.
Though their last year’s blitzkrieg of advertising helped raise people’s awareness on the company, FanDuel Chief Executive Officer Nigel Eccles finds their last year’s marketing strategy to be regrettable and narrow as it focuses more on the money.
“What I would say about last year was that [the commercials were] really driving awareness. Prior to last season very few people had heard of us, so we really wanted to get out there and get people to know us. That was successful — maybe too successful,” Eccles told the business news website. “I think last year we probably focused too much on money,” Eccles said. “I think we probably were too narrow in what we were marketing.”
Zooming in on the money aspect in their ads, according to Eccles, has proven to be problematic since not all are winning as easily as the ads portrayed. The inexperienced players have become the target of skilled players hunting for big prizes, he said.
Eccles acknowledged that this type of “sharks vs. minnows” dilemma presents a challenge to the growth of his product.
“We really struggled — we knew players were saying, ‘Hey, this product is really exciting, it’s a lot of fun, that’s why I play it.’ And we said, ‘OK, how do we put that in an ad?’ I don’t think we were successful there last year. The other reason people loved playing was the prospect and the excitement of winning money, and we focused too much on that. That was definitely a mistake,” he said.
Eccles said that FanDuel’s commercials this year will instead focus on the other important reasons why they should use the app. This was evident in its “SportsRich” ad, which was launched during the first week of the NFL season.
The advertisement didn’t players winning money and didn’t show oversized checks unlike in their previous NFL advertisements.
“We know people play FanDuel for the bragging rights, the camaraderie, they love the research, the high scoring. You see that coming through in our ads this year. Given that we have the awareness, we won’t have the frequency [of ads] we had last year.”
