Are American sports bettors willing to pay $20 a month for boosted parlay odds? That’s exactly what DraftKings is thinking with its new DraftKings+ subscription service, which will offer parlay-obsessed players unlimited odds boost tokens for those risky parlays with more legs than most insects.
Though DraftKings hasn’t been pushing DraftKings+ to the public-at-large, its existence was revealed by reporters at Sportico.com. They’re reporting that DraftKings is offering the new service to selected players. DraftKings+ subscribers will receive a boost on parlay legs that are -500 or lower. The boost for a two-leg parlay is 10 percent with a sliding scale that peaks at a 100 percent boost for an 11-leg parlay.
Parlays have emerged as an extremely popular product with US sports bettors and operators like DraftKings have been keen to capitalize on the trend. Late last year, DraftKings CEO and Chairman Jason Robbins spoke of the importance of differentiating their parlay product to a group of investors saying, “Certainly, we feel like there’s a ton of room to increase our parlay mix and increase our average leg count still. So [the] team is very focused on that.”
DraftKings is keeping the new subscription tier pretty low-key and that’s not surprising, given its nature. Parlays are considered to be high-risk wagers, which is why they pay out so well. Players who seem willing to pay a premium are likely to be very prolific, high-risk players who may be teetering on the edge of problem gambling. This aspect of the service may come under scrutiny by anti-gambling activists in the future.
But, for now, DraftKings is focused on developing a unique parlay product that stands out from the crowd and a premium subscription service definitely fits that bill.