The tagline is a not-so-subtle nod to the ability of gamers or fantasy gamers to win money on certain events within a game – like how many assists a basketball player could hand out – rather than just the bottom line of the game.
At FanDuel, “you take an active part in the result,” says Raffensperger, “regardless of whether it’s just about bragging rights because you’re playing a fantasy sports free play game, or you have money in the sports betting business … make it an additional entertainment vector for the consumption of sport. “
Wieden won the deal after an informal review that included contacting a handful of other agencies. According to Neal Arthur, Chief Operating Officer of W + K, it is the agency’s first sports betting client. “They want to build a brand that is bigger than the category that was the draw for us,” he says.
FanDuel has also increased its internal marketing ranks. In January, the company hired Andrew Sneyd as Senior Vice President of Brand Marketing. He came from Priceline where he was VP and Head of Brand Marketing and Strategy. Before that, he held various marketing functions at Anheuser-Busch InBev, including as Global Marketing VP for Budweiser. At FanDuel, his job is to “give a fantastic performance marketing engine some brand polish and clout – in other words, to find out how we can achieve both: sell today and sell for tomorrow,” he says.
Wieden is expected to work closely with FanDuel’s in-house agency, a roughly 30-strong unit led by Executive Creative Director Steven Giraldi, who has worked at Epsilon and R / GA.
Shopping Spree
FanDuel has drawn attention to itself for years with its main rival DraftKings. Both started out as daily fantasy sports providers but entered the sports betting market after the Supreme Court ruling to lift a federal sports betting ban in 2018, according to the American Gaming Association. (Wyoming and Arizona will be live soon.)
The mainstreaming of gambling has resulted in an increase in marketing spend for both providers. DraftKings spent $ 73.9 million on metered media in the U.S. for the first five months of the year, up from $ 9.8 million in the same period in 2020, while FanDuel’s spending was 8.8, according to Kantar Million US dollars rose to 49 million US dollars.
DraftKings has also shown signs of adding some shine to its marketing. The brand launched a campaign earlier this month called “The Feels,” starring Martin Lawrence, dramatizing the emotions of sports bettors by putting thoughts and feelings such as “logic” and “indecision” into human form. The effort that is handled internally is carried out during the NFL games.
Dustin Gouker, an analyst at legalsportsreport.com, which covers regulated sports betting, says DraftKings and FanDuel are improving their marketing games to become “brand conscious for a larger audience,” especially as more states legalize betting. While New York and Florida have laws legalizing sports betting, they’re still not live in the states. And sports betting remains illegal in Texas and California.
“Sports betting is still emerging, although it is this hot topic and a lot of money is pouring into it, the target audience for sports betting alone is still quite small,” says Gouker.
But DraftKings and FanDuel have to defend their turf, while other big brands get involved when huge markets like New York open up. Fanatics, the giant online seller of licensed sporting goods, recently hired ex-FanDuel CEO Matt King to explore a leap into sports betting, according to multiple media reports. Jay-Z is involved in an offer by the company to enter the New York sports betting market, as described by ESPN.
The more states open, the more ad inventory. The NFL’s move to accept sports betting advertising is particularly important given the league’s reach. Purchases remain limited, however: the league has limited the number of sports betting ads that can appear during a single game to six – one spot per quarter plus one pre-game and half-time ad, an NFL spokesman confirmed. Additionally, the league’s broadcast partners only accept ads from the NFL’s official sports betting sponsors, including DraftKings, FanDuel and Caesars Entertainment. (Ads will also be available to four NFL-approved sportsbooks, FoxBet, BetMGM, PointsBet, and WynnBet, according to nbc.sports.com.) The rules prohibit ads from showing active NFL players
FanDuel will specifically only include its sports betting in ads during NFL games that are served in regional markets where sports betting is legal and where mobile sports betting is offered: New Jersey, West Virginia, Virginia, Pennsylvania, Indiana, Colorado, Illinois, Iowa, Michigan and Tennessee. The ads show NFL viewers anxiously watching games with bets on the line during several in-game moments.
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