INSIGHT
“eSports is a lot harder to do than traditional
sports, because there’s no mature leagues
and data sources.”
staying, “You know what, we’re going to
stop this.” Because if they are regulating and
taxing the activity, they are more likely to
support it.
How easy to navigate is the
international legal terrain for a
real-money fantasy-based product
such as yours?
Most European countries require a license.
We are in discussions and are working on
that. In the meantime, we restrict our paid
users to North America, or to countries
that have not regulated this and do not
require a license. For the UK and other
European countries, most of our activity is
coming from free users.
This is really one of the things we have
really innovated on and what sets us apart
from the traditional DFS model, is in
traditional DFS, you play with money or
you don’t play much at all. There’s nothing
else to do on those sites, it’s fantasy, it’s one
format, and you play with money. But we
saw that 90% of the people who come to
our sites, not just our site, but other DFS
sites - Fan Duel, DraftKings and others register but don’t play with money. So as
a business it’s pretty stupid to bring 100
people to your door, and then turn away 90
of them right?
So, our solution was to provide a lot
of free stuff, so you can play all sorts of
mini games for free on the site in virtual
currencies, and win virtual prizes.
So how do these virtual currency
games operate alongside the realmoney fantasy product? Do you
eventually see these working as
an acquisition stream for the daily
fantasy games?
The interesting thing is because these
are gamers, they care a lot about virtual,
in-game items, so if they are playing a
particular game, and they want a virtual
badge, they want a new gun in their game,
or they want a new skin for their character,
these are all virtual items. They don’t have
any real-money value, but you can come
to Vulcun, play for free, win some of these
items in your game. So, there no cash
involved, but it creates a lot of engagement,
and gives the other 90% something to do,
so that is where most of the activity in
Europe is focused on.
As for it being a potential acquisition
stream, it’s too early to know for sure, as we
only just started doing it this month, and
launching a DFS mobile app this year.
Overall, fantasy is about a third of the
overall market for, say, American football.
It’s a smaller market, because this doesn’t
appeal to everyone. For eSports, the same
trends are going to apply. It’s going to be
smaller than the overall eSports market
by a significant margin, say 10-30% of the
overall eSports fan base.
Search is not an effective way to reach
these people. There is almost no search
volume around these terms. So we