US-facing daily fantasy sports sites have seen a major decline in tournament entries and guaranteed prize pools (GPP) since the insider trading scandal broke back in September.
According to a recently released analytics report from Adam Kreijcik, managing director of digital and interactive gaming at Eilers Research, action in GPPs is down as much as $10 million a week from the beginning of the season.
While Kreijcik points to scandals as being the major culprit, he’s quick to point out that isn’t the only factor at play here:
There are numerous explanations as to why these tournaments have been experiencing declines, not the least being the negative PR /extraordinary events surrounding the industry lately. However, we believe there may also be some larger fundamental issues at work, namely, a general shift towards ‘cash games’, which provide a much greater value proposition for the majority of all users.
Casual observers would probably also notice that the DFS decline coincides with a DFS advertising decline on television and radio. After absolutely wallpapering the media with advertisements early in the fall, both DraftKings and Fan Duel have cut their advertising budgets dramatically.
According to a report posted on LegalSportsReport.com, this is third straight week that neither Fan Duel nor DraftKings appeared on the list of top TV advertisers on US networks. That’s a major shift from earlier in the season when the two sites accounted for nearly 60% of all television advertising.
It’s also possible that US players have finished experimenting with DFS and most of them have opted to return to traditional, more competitive, fantasy football leagues that aren’t dominated by spreadsheet-wielding analytics nerds.