FanDuel CEO wants to attract more women to sports betting

[The Buzz]

FanDuel's new CEO, Amy Howe, wants to change the way sports gambling companies have largely overlooked women in their race to sign up users.

While women make up almost half of U.S. sports fans, they represent less than one-third of sports bettors, according to an article on Bloomberg, which also stated that last year, Golden Nugget Online Gaming Inc. said just 5% of online sports bettors are women, compared with 51% of customers wagering in land-based casinos. FanDuel, of course, is a division of Flutter Entertainment.

From Bloomberg:

“If you look at the marketing, it’s been very male-centric,” said Howe, who was named chief executive officer of the sports-betting company FanDuel in October. “I don’t think there has been an effort to appeal to a female audience.” New York-based FanDuel is a division of Dublin’s Flutter Entertainment Plc.

An early example of FanDuel’s outreach to women took place this fall when it hosted a fantasy football league with the Gist, a female-focused sports outlet.

The Gist promoted FanDuel’s fantasy league in its newsletter, which has about 350,000 subscribers, and in social media posts like: “Tired of never being invited to play fantasy football? We were too.”

“We’re a safe space for people who have felt under-served and left out of sports media,” said Ellen Hyslop, one of the site’s three female co-founders.

The stakes were relatively modest: the league’s entry fee was $2, with the winner getting $2,000. But the point was to get more women comfortable with fantasy sports and with FanDuel, according to Howe.

“For some women, setting up a fantasy sports league and participating in sports betting can be intimidating,” Howe said. “This creates an environment that is safe and relatable.”

“They need to be creating a more inclusive product across the board,” said Messler, who recently started Gaming Society, a sports betting and gaming startup for casual fans. “The interest among women is there, but the barrier to entry is high.”

Read the article here: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/artic...tting-to-women

[potentialeight]

“If you look at the marketing, it’s been very male-centric,” said Howe, who was named chief executive officer of the sports-betting company FanDuel in October. “I don’t think there has been an effort to appeal to a female audience.” New York-based FanDuel is a division of Dublin’s Flutter Entertainment Plc.

I'm sure that there have been marketing attempts to appeal to a female audience, and I would be interested to see the results of that work.

[themilann]

I think women are generally more outgoing and social compared to men, thus their preference for land-based gambling.

In order to attract women into online gambling, the industry has to come up with a sort of a "mingling" aspect where they can socialize and get to know other players too.

[Sherlock]

Maybe they can offer gender reassignment surgery as a bonus.

[PROFRBcom]

Fanduel is going to spend their marketing budget on appealing to women.... for sports betting...

OK!!!

Shorting SRAD on the next rip up in the markets.

Thanks for the tip!

[MJM]

I'm a member of a few sports betting groups on Facebook (I like to keep an eye on the public voices in our industry for insight and content ideas). While I don't have any data or stats to share, I was surprised at how many women are active bettors in these groups.

[Pokerface]

This would be interesting to follow. Curious what the stats are in betting behaviours between men and women. Interesting comment by MJM.

[potentialeight]

I'm a member of a few sports betting groups on Facebook (I like to keep an eye on the public voices in our industry for insight and content ideas). While I don't have any data or stats to share, I was surprised at how many women are active bettors in these groups.

I have a lot of aunts and great aunts who are huge college basketball fans here in North Carolina where we have Wake Forest, UNC, NC State and Duke all right on top of each other, and I swear all they do is send $5 back and forth to each other on PayPal betting on games amongst themselves. Basketball season is starting up again, so I've been hearing the bragging lately.

It might get up to the dizzy heights of $10 when their favorite teams actually play each other lol.

[PROFRBcom]

While I don't have any data or stats to share, I was surprised at how many women are active bettors in these groups.

Or rather, how many men pretend to be women on the Internet?

Or rather, how many men make new accounts at online sportsbooks pretending to be their wives, girlfriends, and grandmothers (yes, I advocated for a client once and the site came back and told me that everything seemed in order with the documents, but it was very strange that an 87 year old woman was playing multiple tables of online poker, with a winning strategy).

[potentialeight]

Or rather, how many men pretend to be women on the Internet?

Or rather, how many men make new accounts at online sportsbooks pretending to be their wives, girlfriends, and grandmothers (yes, I advocated for a client once and the site came back and told me that everything seemed in order with the documents, but it was very strange that an 87 year old woman was playing multiple tables of online poker, with a winning strategy).

My first memory of this sort of thing happening was something like 15 years ago when Empiremaker2 figured out how to launch more than one instance of [what I believe was] the PartyPoker client on the same computer by just repeatedly clicking the icon. He would then multi-play SNGs and MTTs pretending to be his grandma.

When asked why he didn't think it was unethical if both accounts were sitting at the same table deep in an MTT, he said if that happened, he'd just add SNGs to dilute his focus rofl.