To many industry observers, legislation is not the biggest risk to the daily fantasy industry.
Rather, a significant threat exists around the hard-core player, also frequently termed a “shark” or a “quant.” These uber-avid players use advanced statistics and analytics to determine the best fantasy lineups on any given day, and then strategically seek out games populated by more novice players.
Unchecked, the sharks run the risk of discouraging new players from trying daily fantasy and ultimately choking off the meteoric growth patterns.
“Daily fantasy sites are having a real problem with sharks versus minnows,” said Nik Bonaddio, founder and chief executive of sports analytics site numberFire.
Because of that, both FanDuel and DraftKings have increasingly implemented controls around their games to promote a safer environment. Among the measures are daily spending limits, creating designated games available only for beginner players, allowing the ability to block specific users in head-to-head matchups, and capping the number of individual games a player can enter in any given day.
“It’s a very valid concern, and something we have to actively manage,” said Nigel Eccles, FanDuel chief executive. “If we see sharks are behaving in a predatory way, we have and will continue to act. We’ve changed the rules on the site multiple times to limit the sharks’ ability to eat up new players.”
By definition, though, daily fantasy games will produce winners and losers, and the industry must also walk a fine line to still allow truly skilled players to become long-term winners. To that end, operators of high-stakes tournaments in traditional fantasy sports are also finding increased attention in their offerings from top daily players.
“When you’re good at one, you’re probably good at the other,” said Greg Ambrosius, founder of the National Fantasy Football Championship and National Fantasy Baseball Championship, and director of consumer fantasy games at Stats LLC. “We continue to grow and see new people coming in, and that’s no doubt driven in part by what’s happening in the daily space.”
