This also appeared in The Daily Payoff
At last week’s Fantasy Sports Trade Association Summer Conference in New York, a crowd of several hundred, most on laptops, listened intently to sports and fantasy business leaders talk about the upward growth and engagement of consumers in and around all things fantasy, especially the fascination with daily pay fantasy, a part of the field dominated by the two biggest players, Fan Duel and DraftKings.
The data, provided by Jason Allsopp of the research firm Ipsos, was amazingly positive news for those in the room; More people are playing fantasy than ever before, with 51.6 million people age 12 and over in the United States engaged, 20 percent of the population, up from 14 percent in 2014.
More importantly perhaps, women are playing fantasy sports in much larger numbers, with 33 percent of players now female, a big jump in the last three years. The biggest jump overall is in DFS play, where seventeen percent of all fantasy players play DFS exclusively, up from 8 percent in 2013, with spending up to $257 annually for a DFS player who was only spending $15 in 2012.
However one of the most important factors that came out of the Ipsos study was mobile engagement. Fantasy players are becoming increasingly mobile with just 44 percent of players using a desktop or laptop computer is their primary device for fantasy sports. That was down from 68 percent in 2013. The combination of an avid mobile user and a more engaged younger audience is not really surprising given where consumers are trending these days, and it’s even less surprising when you look at a global audience that could engage in fantasy, but what is surprising is the lack of mobile adoption by fantasy businesses at this stage.
The model of DFS as it stands now for the larger players are based around salary cap games. While apps do provide a mobile option, setting full lineups on a smaller device given the amount of research needed is both tricky and cumbersome. Since retention and acquisition for the bigger sites like FanDuel and Draft Kings is so vital for growth (reportedly neither are profitable yet despite the millions invested in the brands by everyone from venture capital to the NBA and MLB), a tough mobile option can be a turn-off for the younger mobile savvy first adopter. Both Fan Duel and DraftKings have been bullish in tackling the mobile experience and are making strides with their apps so that they are as user friendly as possible, but does more need to be done?
If mobile is key, can companies pivot to simpler, non-salary cap mobile first game that are springing up by the dozens? And if simpler and mobile is where the DFS industry needs to go, can there be a micro-option built in that will bring large revenue and more players for simpler games?
“We have seen that the best mobile experiences; Instagram, SnapChat, are simple to engage with and easy to navigate for everyone,” said Tom Richardson, Columbia University professor, veteran sports marketer and one of the most engaged professionals in sports in the mobile field. “While companies like FanDuel and Draft Kings are doing a good job with their experience for consumers, the bottom line is consumers will always expect not just a good, but an easy and simple mobile experience and fantasy businesses need to think that way first to grow, especially new businesses trying to find a niche in the space. Without a prime mobile experience first, you will have big challenges acquiring and retaining consumers no matter how much money you raise or how robust your offering is.”
We have seen freemium games outside of sports; Angry Birds, Candy Crush, draw big numbers of engagement because of simplicity. That model lasts for shorter periods of times, and in the case of Rovio and Angry Birds, has led to issues when the company tried a new level of engagement.
With a host of new players coming into the marketplace, from big media companies like Yahoo to many smaller players looking for not just a piece of the current marketshare but for a way to actually increase the size of the market by engaging milennials, women and casual sports consumers, is simpler and mobile the next step?
