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Vancouver-based ProDraftLeague.com hopes to make the big leagues, having just raised over a million in funding since January and doubling their business from roughly 5000 customers to 10000 customers since the start of the year.
Founder and CEO Mark Tadros tells the Globe and Mail he was hours away from pulling the plug last summer, unable to compete with the big boys FanDuel and DraftKings. FanDuel recently claimed to have over 665,000 active users. ProDraftLeague.com's customer base is roughly 2 percent of that.
While DraftKings and FanDuel both bring massive exposure to the daily fantasy sports space, they also suck up most of the market.
“But the other side of the equation is they’re blanketing the market, and advertising is getting very expensive in our space,” Tadros says. “Everything in this industry is growing at an exponential rate, which is where the big challenge is: How do we get onto that wave?”
Tadros provided a glimpse into the current strategy of your typical daily fantasy website: Make your investors happy by gaining marketing exposure.
ProDraftLeague.com did just that last week when various media outlets, including TMZ.com, picked up on an offer by Tadros made to pay suspended NFL star Ray Rice $1 million in an endorsement deal. Rice is currently without a team following a widely publicized assault on his then fiancé in a casino elevator last summer. The event was captured on video surveillance.
“They (the investors) assured us that if we have an opportunity for big exposure, they’ll ante up the dollars,” Mr. Tadros says.
One such opportunity for all daily fantasy interests will be the upcoming Daily Fantasy Sports Expo in Miami Beach this coming August where site owners, investors, affiliates, technology firms, media enterprises and search engine representatives are set to converge.
“This is the first event of its kind and everybody who is anybody in this space is anxious to attend,” commented Payton O’Brien, Senior Editor of Gambling911.com, a main sponsor at DFSE.
The event will provide opportunities for sites like PDL to showcase their uniqueness to potential investors and affiliates looking to promote daily fantasy sports companies.
ProDraftLeague.com is unusual in that it offers a traditional season long fantasy format in addition to the daily contests.
They also offer a “live interactive draft room” that resembles an online poker table by letting players see their competitors.
“We’ve created different styles of games and applied them to the daily concept,” Mr. Tadros explains.
- Aaron Goldstein, Gambling911.com
