DraftKings, FanDuel slash advertising budgets post-football season

To the shock of absolutely no one, DraftKings and FanDuel slashed the bejeezus out of the advertising budgets once the football season began to come to a close.

Just how much did they cut their budgets? Well, according to MediaPost, DraftKings spent around $1.6 million from December 21st to January 21st, while FanDuel spent just shy of $1 million over the same period. To put those numbers in perspective, the two companies spent a combined $206 million from the beginning of this year until October 1st and both ranked among the top ten advertisers on television from August until the beginning of November.

More details from MediaPost…

From December 21 through January 21, DraftKings spent just $1.6 million — much of it with the NFL Network, according to iSpot.tv. By contrast, for a period of nearly five months beginning in September 2014, DraftKings spent some $95.3 million.

Likewise, competitor FanDuel has slowed spending down dramatically to just $994,970 dollars from December 21 through January 21. Much of its national TV spending went to cable networks TNT and NBA TV.

[…]

FanDuel spent $70.1 million on NFL football programming and $7.7 million on college football. DraftKings spent $37.3 million on NFL football, and $9.2 million on college football.

Again, this isn’t a surprise – at this point in the year, we’re really only looking at daily basketball and hockey leagues, and neither of those sports have anywhere near the casual fan appeal as football.

But the overall drop is telling – less than $1 million on advertising in a month from FanDuel? That’s shocking and, quite frankly, downright pleasant given the deluge of ads during the NFL season.

However, I’m sure the ESPN/NCAA decree about no DFS ads during the College Football Playoff had an effect on the purchasing habits of the companies. Those were three huge audiences that were ripe for the picking for DraftKings and FanDuel, and they were off limits.

[MediaPost]