DraftKings CEO Jason Robins

start of football season. I mean, football has to be like your main you know, your main season. This has gotta be like waking up on Christmas morning seeing the beginning of football. Just how big is football relative to some of the other sports on DraftKings. You've pretty much nailed it. I've been watching the stats all day. I've been hooked on watching them, and numbers keep going up.

It's a great day. The first Thursday in the first Sunday are usually the two biggest customer acquisition days of the year. We're gonna add about a hundred thousand new registrants today, um probably even more on Sunday. And you know, This is the fun time. This is when all the numbers are going up. Everybody's excited, and it's a good time. Because I'm a sports fan, football fan too, so I get double benefit of being excited about the football season

and it being a big day for draft teams. Yeah. Absolutely, absolutely, Like who is your team, Jason, who's your team? Well, we're based in Boston kind of probably guess the Patriots. But fair enough. You know, I like all football and I'm a fantasy player, So whoever is on my fantasy That's what I was just gonna say. I like, that's what I was gonna ask you share more for the Patriots or for your fantasy team or for your lineup in Draft Kings, which which is your true allegiance? Okay, alright,

fair enough. Let me ask you something. You mentioned that you guys are gonna add like hundreds of thousands of new users just in this weekend. Okay, so, as not only the CEO of DraftKings, but like you said, a fantasy football player yourself, what kind of advice would you give the first time player, someone who's just dipping their toe in the waters of daily fantasy, you know, should they started maybe like a cash game or a head to head or go straight to some of the g PPS,

some of the big tournaments out there. What advice would you have for someone who's just getting started with Daily Fantasy, one of these new hundred thousand people that were just added today to your site. Oh, you're probably a lot better guy to be asking that than me, but I'll give it a shot. I think it depends on your goals. If you're looking to, you know, play it for a few bucks and try to win a big score, and you're gonna want to focus on the big guaranteed price pool.

If you're looking to kind of practice and get to know the game and you know, maybe make you know, smaller kinda winds wins but bit more steadiness, then I would focus on playing the double ups or sit tifties or head to head. So it really depends on what your goal is, all right. I guess it depends on

how risk averse you are as an individual. But if you're on DraftKings wage and you gotta have a little bit of action on it, and it sounds like this is good time of the year for DraftKings, let me ask you something, Jason, because I saw over on DraftKings. You guys are offering not a thousand, not even a million, but a billion with a B. I feel like dr evil. You know, it's even saying that you're offering a billion

dollars to someone if they can get the perfect line up. Hey, Jason, why don't you tell us about that fun contest you guys are doing for a week one? Uh, this is the biggest contest far we've ever run. And you know the basic gist. It is totally free to enter, so no I go to use existing players common Wanter. It's no cost um. There's a hundred thousand and guaranteed prizes no matter what happened. So about a hundred thousand people are going to be getting something paid into their account

for doing well. And then if you hit the perfect lineup, you went a billion dollars and it's fully insured. That don't worry, We're not taking the risk ourselves. We got number of different insurance companies to back it, so you know, it's pretty exciting. Obviously, it's very difficult, takes a ton of skill to be able to pick the perfect lineup, but if you do it, you get a billion dollars, which is I'm sure enough to stay. It's pretty amazing

sum of money for anybody to win. Sure you said it, just it was free to enter that contest, right, so I like my return on investment, might as well going over, might as well going over to Draft Kings. Right now, I'm gonna throw in a lineup, and Jason, if you want to know the billion dollar perfect lineup, all you gotta do is tune into Fantasy Freestyle tomorrow, man, and I'm gonna be giving it out for you. I'm gonna

be giving it out for you. Let me ask you this because we've heard so much in the fantasy community about the back and forth with UM all of these dfs and different states. I got a listener that asked me. His name is Taco and Alabama. He said he's been going through withdrawal from Draft Kings for like two years. You know, he really wants to play. Where are we right now in some of the different states as a state by state kind of thing. I'm here in New York and it was, you know, it was off the

radar for a few months last year. Where do we stand right now? So that our players know what they can do, what they can't do, where they can deposit where they can play all that. Where are we standing right now, Jason, Well, right now, there's forty one states where you can play Draft Kings, and unfortunately Alabama is and one of them actually saw that. Guys, twea taco in Alabama? Yeah, I mean, how you gonna forget taco on exactly exactly I saw that, but unfortunately not yet.

Now Abama, we're working on it. We have some legislation. It's active. So something you're passionate about you can help. Yeah, send, send, send a note and email will make it really easy to do your legislator, get your friends to do it. Let them know you care. Um, let them know this should be a priority for them in the next legislative session. We'd love to go back to Alabama. It was really disappointing for us that we ended up having to exit

that state. It's great state, great sports fans, and looking forward to hopefully getting something done in the in the legislature and getting back up and running in Alabama. Yeah, absolutely said Hey, my last question because I know we're up against it, but um, thank you so much for joining Fantasy Freestyle. But Jason, what's next on the horizon for DraftKings. You know you got the billion Dollar Game.

There any other fun contests out there? I know, my man? Uh, you know, Mayo is joining you guys and sometimes soon what about like DFS Bachelor or DFS Politics. What's next? What's next? One you guys branch out away from football? Oh man, I don't know, ye haven't you know? We've talked about doing different types of games like that. Right now we're sticking to sports, but you know it's in the future. The latest thing we did is we launched

a new game called Pick Them. And the reason we want to pick them is we're getting a lot of feedback from people if they wanted to try it, but they didn't like be on with the salary cap and you put a player in and then you're over and you can't pick who you want. You got to take them out, and it's just annoying for people, and a lot of people like if it's something. So the pick them game by the same idea. You pick some players, you get to score. Team might think, but instead of

having salary caps, we've created tears of players. So you just go and you have a list that I got to pick one of the ten guys I hat to one of the easy guys, and you go down the list and picking the group together players that would be a similar salaries, So you're picking from a similar set of people. Um, So it kind of effectively balances the salary cap for you and you don't have to worry

with you going within tears than to play. But yeah, it's great because it involves just as much skill, but it's easier for especially a new player to be able to come in and figure out and play. It's just picking players, not worrying about the salary cap. Alright, awesome, And let me ask you this. You say your last question for you, Jason, and thanks so much for stopping by the cipher here on Fantasy Freestyle, you said you're

a fantasy football player yourself. You're out there for Pat's chiefs. Which Patriots chiefs you have in your line of trying to win a billion dollars? Well, you know it's tough to play GROUNK today. Becaus got Eric Berry on him. I think he will. Um, I think Brady is gonna have a big game. It's hard to say that he's gonna throw it too, But who's gonna fill that? Julian Edelman role. Come on, Jason, we need your inside Who's filling that role? Is it? Mitchell is one of the

running backs. Well, Mitchell just cut put on the I R. Not him. Ammon Dola, give me a little Danny, Ammon Dola. Emmon Dola is probably the best. You know, Hogan is more of a deep threat, thank you, am and Dola is probably the best bet to fill that. I also think they could lean on James White a bit in this game. He was cheap on DraftKings, and he's a guy that had an incredible Super Bowl and he won for the ages. He was arguably if Brady didn't do what he did the m v P at that game.

And you know, he's a player that can catch a lot of passes the back field, So I think they might be leaning on him a lot without their slot guys a full strength. Alright, fair enough. This is Jason Robbins, the CEO of DraftKings, telling us about the billion dollar contest for the perfect lineup and all things going on on DraftKings, into including some of the little mini tournaments that he's got going on. Thank you so much for stopping by the show, Jason. After I win my million dollars?

Can I invoice you directly? You mean you're billion? Right? Hey, listen, I'm gonna start small with the million dollar maker, and then I'll get to the bill, you know. Okay, baby, staff, you gotta crawl before you could. I thought you were going to give out the winning lineup tomorrow. Hey, listen, listen, I can still win a million dollars and not have the perfect lineup for the billion. You know. Listen, I'll take a million. I'll be just fine with that. Don't

worry about it. I'll be happy winning my fifty fifty contests. You're getting me? Well, if you win a million or a billion, yeah, you can invoice me directly. I'll take care of it. Sounds good, Jason, thanks for stopping by the Fantasy Freestyle. Enjoy the season opener out there, and come on back on the show when you get a chance sometime, all right, anytime. I'd love to thanks guys. He's really opener.