Paddy Power Betfair Acquires DRAFT; Interview with Jeremy Levine
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Early Wednesday morning, Paddy Power Betfair announced the acquisition of daily fantasy sports operator, DRAFT, in a deal that features an initial cash consideration of $19m with further cash consideration of up to $29m payable over the next four years, dependent upon business performance.
DRAFT will continue to be run by CEOs, Jeremy Levine and Jordan Fliegel, but now the company will have access to Paddy Power Betfair’s tremendous marketing and technology resources.
Chief Executive of Paddy Power Betfair, Breon Corcoran, stated: “We are excited to be bringing DRAFT into the Group and to further increase our presence in the United States. DRAFT has a differentiated product and we believe the business, with the support of our marketing and technology expertise, can take share in the fast-growing daily fantasy sports market.”
Full Paddy Power Betfair press release on DRAFT acquisition
RotoGrinders.com had the opportunity to talk with Jeremy Levine about this ground-breaking deal and what it means for the daily fantasy community.
RotoGrinders: Congrats on the deal Jeremy. The details of the deal aren’t specific but there is mention of further cash consideration of $29M over four years depending on business performance. What can you tell us about that?
Jeremy Levine: Thanks, we’re excited for this opportunity! We’ve set ambitious targets and are going to work with Paddy Power Betfair to achieve them. If we are able to meet these targets, they’ll continue to fund and help us build up. We will be here for a long time.
RotoGrinders: How did this sale end up taking place – what brought you to today?
Jeremy Levine: I had built a great relationship with the CEO of Betfair USA/TVG over the last couple years, and more recently the CEO of Paddy Power Betfair, Breon Corcoran. As we discussed our vision, we realized they could greatly accelerate us and working together would be a natural fit. They are leaders both globally and in the USA in online regulated gaming markets, and daily fantasy sports is quickly becoming a regulated market. Their expertise will help us tremendously.
RotoGrinders: You’ve talked about how this deal will increase your marketing spend 100 fold – how will you do this and how do you think it will impact the company moving forward?
Jeremy Levine: We’re going to be marketing DRAFT in many ways, especially for the upcoming football season. We’ve got a bunch of massive partnerships lined up and will certainly be ramping up our marketing spend significantly. As far as impact, we’ve always believed the most important user metric is the average wait time for a DRAFT. The more people playing DRAFT the less you have to wait for a draft to start, the better experience for everyone. During football season last year, our average wait time was under six minutes. This season we expect that to get to under a minute.
RotoGrinders: An increase in scale has often led to disaster for DFS sites. Is DRAFT prepared for this probability?
Jeremy Levine: Absolutely. I’ve been lucky to work with our co-founder and CTO Nicolo Giorgi for over seven years and he and our tech team are the best there is. We know huge growth is coming and we know making sure our technology can scale is of the utmost importance.
RotoGrinders: This is a full acquisition by Paddy Power Betfair. How will this impact DRAFT in terms of operations, gameplay, and user experience?
Jeremy Levine: Nothing is going to change for us other than having more firepower and resources. We’re going to continue to run the company and our entire team is remaining. We’re going to be the same team but even bigger building the best product and experience for our users. Our primary objective remains the same, to make DRAFT the best place to play. We’ve got lots on our road map, and though we already think DRAFT is a great product, we know it will be even better come football season.
RotoGrinders: What do you think this deal means in terms of competing against the likes of DraftKings and FanDuel?
Jeremy Levine: We don’t necessarily look at it as a competition. Our game, by virtue of the snake draft, is very different.
RotoGrinders What do you think the deal means for the DFS community as a whole?
Jeremy Levine: We certainly feel it’s great news. We’ll be able to continue building towards our vision and our goals. Our goal has been and always will be to build the best place to play for fantasy players and communities like the amazing one here at RotoGrinders.