Despite having faced numerous obstacles in the United States this year, daily fantasy sports operators DraftKings and FanDuel are doing quite well this NFL season. The National Football League season provides the companies with the majority of their revenues with Sunday being the big earner. Both companies are reporting seven figures each week with entry fees and revenues reaching high numbers.
With DraftKings, the company recently earned just over $20 million in entry fees for contests which includes guaranteed prize pool contests and non-guaranteed cash games. Prizes of $18.9 million were awarded this past week and $1.8 million in revenues earned. For FanDuel, last week’s figures show the company received $15 million in entry fees, $2.2 million in revenues and almost $13 million in prizes were awarded.
These numbers show that the DFS companies are raking in the big bucks, despite having had issues in several states within the US since last year. Starting in late 2015, the daily fantasy sports operators were restricted as to where they could operate when individual states decided they were going to rule the activity as gambling and force the companies to remove services. However, many states have adopted legislation or are in the process of doing so to regulate the industry which allows the companies to operate DFS services once again.
Just a few days ago, there was also talk of the two DFS operators merging into one company. Reportedly, there are multiple sources with information that the long-rumored merger of FanDuel and DraftKings will finally be taking place. It has been reported that the companies are discussing who would lead the new company after the merger and where headquarters would be situated. It seems that possibly the final details are being sorted out before the two become one.
Speaking to ESPN, a spokesperson for DraftKings stated that a potential combination would be interesting to consider. However, as a matter of policy, comments on rumors or speculation are not made and there are no assurances at this time that can be made that any discussion about a combination would result in an agreement or merger.