DraftKings Inc. (NASDAQ:DKNG) Q3 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Joseph Stauff: Thanks, Jason.

Jason Robins: Thank you.

Operator: One moment for our next question. Our next question comes from Dan Politzer with Wells Fargo. Your line is open.

Daniel Politzer: Hey. Good morning, everybody. I was hoping you could talk a little bit more about hold. Maybe as you see it philosophically or the long term. I mean is there kind of a target or upper limit you see relative to the kind of mid-9 level you’re at now? And I guess maybe along with that, how do you think about the trade-offs for hold relative to LTV for the customer?

Jason Robins: Yeah. I mean I think this is something that we’ll just always continue to be analyzing and optimizing. And it’s almost a tricky question to think about in that sense because it really depends on where you’re getting hold increase from. If you continue to create products that the customer wants and they have demand that have higher hold, then that can do a great job, I think, of continuing to raise your hold and I think on the other side of it, if you’re raising hold by either forcing people into things that they really don’t want or making your pricing worse than the market. I think that’s obviously potentially going to have a negative impact on LTV. So we’re very focused on the customer and on creating – we think – and we’ve seen this with a number of products we’ve created from SGP to cash out.

We have a new one that we’re going to be talking about at our Investor Day that we’re launching, which I love that, I’m really excited about that kind of fits this double objective of being great for the customer and holding better than the average. So I think we have a long runway on that front. And it’s really about focusing on the customer and maximizing the LTV. So in the end, if we do see that anything, whether it’s sort of just the concept that holds higher or a particular product or anything that we’ve introduced is having an adverse effect on LTVs. And obviously, we’ll try to turn the dials accordingly. But that’s really what the team is focused on. Hold is obviously a variable promotions are variable, but retention is the most important variable.

So very much focused across all value creation drivers across the LTV spectrum. And I think that hold is something that, again, it’s a little tricky because it depends on how you’re doing it, but I do think there’s a lot more room for upside there than not.

Daniel Politzer: Got it. Thank you.

Operator: One moment for our next question. Our next question comes from Robert Fishman with MoffettNathanson. Your line is open.

Robert Fishman: Hi. Good morning. On iGaming, despite still early days on legalization, has your confidence increased over the past year of how big of a driver iGaming can be for total company revenue? Maybe also importantly, total company profitability. And then just separately, with some of your competitors using that vision for streaming NFL games this year, can you discuss your updated thoughts on streaming live games in your app and whether you think there’s any long-term benefits for DraftKings.

Jason Robins: So great questions. On the first one, I mean, iGaming is probably the one piece of our business I’d point to that’s under talked about, namely because we’re only in 11% of the population now. 87% is still not legalized. Huge opportunity there. Obviously, still tremendous opportunity with a little bit around half of the U.S. population, not having legal sports betting and all our oldest markets still growing too. But iGaming, as we’ve noted in the past, we believe has roughly 2 times the TAM on a per capita basis as online sports betting. So a tremendous opportunity and I do think you’ll start to see more momentum in the states in the coming years. It’s just as we thought in the beginning, sports is kind of leading the charge.

But I definitely feel like that’s an under talked about opportunity, and I’m glad that you’re bringing it up and something that we — much like the sports market feel we’re very well positioned in having the number one position in the market at this point. And then as far as the question on streaming and the app, it’s something we did look at and continue to look. I mean, one of the exciting parts of where we’re at right now as a company, and as an industry is that there’s still so much innovation out there, and there’s so many things that we can do to create value for the customer and for the business. And we had a really full product road map going into NFL, didn’t end up prioritizing that one, but it’s something we continue to evaluate. Like I said, I think the fact that there’s things that people feel are value creating out there that we probably would agree our value creating out there that still didn’t make the cut because we have so many other really exciting things that we believe are adding value and generating the results that we’ve generated.

It’s just really special time right now in the evolution of the market to be at, where there’s so much great opportunity and so much innovation. And I think this is a great example of just this long product road map we have of things that we know and have confidence will deliver value. And it’s just a matter of time before we can get to it all.

Robert Fishman: Perfect. Thank you.

Operator: One moment for our next question. Our next question comes from Barry Jonas with Truist Securities. Your line is open.

Barry Jonas: Hey, guys. Good morning. Can you maybe talk about your expectations for the next wave of state to legalize OSB and where you could get access? Thanks.

Jason Robins: Yeah. Great question. It’s hard to say. Obviously, if you look at the map, a lot of the biggest states outside of the top three have already legalized. Obviously, Georgia is still one that’s in that top 10 that has had some momentum in the last couple of years and hopefully, we get some traction there this year. Obviously, the big prizes of California, Texas and Florida are still out there, but those might be a little longer path with Texas not meeting again until ’25 and Florida and California requiring ballot initiatives. So those are really kind of the big speeds in terms of population left out there. And I would say probably the clearest path now of them is in Georgia, but still really hard to say what the timing and likelihood of that is.