Wagering on DraftKings
The Optics of Sports Today, Big Game Bets, and DFS
By Jonathon Western
DraftKings (U.S. Patent No. 10,744,413)
The return of professional sports in the United States has ushered a similar resurgence of a parallel industry: sports gambling.
Not surprisingly, the sports betting industry struggled mightily as sports fell victim to the virus. But with baseball, basketball, football, hockey, and golf now in full-swing, the industry has benefited from pent-up demand, not to mention a busier-than-usual summer sports schedule. And while the outward appearance of sports has undergone a pandemic-proofing makeover—with spectators made of cardboard and post-game interviews using microphones attached to ten-foot poles—sports betting, its online presence at least, has remained largely unchanged (in-person gaming at casinos is a different story).
Let’s take a look at the optics of Super Bowl 55. Cardboard fans mixed with front line healthcare workers, player’s families and friends. The social norm for Americans was to watch the game from home and to grab take out. Betting covered everything from the coin toss, to The Weekend’s blazer choice, to the winner’s Gatorade color.
Standing at the forefront of online fantasy sports and gaming is Boston-based DraftKings. Known for its daily fantasy sports (DFS) enterprise and popular Millionaire Maker contests, DraftKings has emerged as a major player in the sports gambling industry in a relatively short period of time. Shortly before the world went on lock down earlier this Spring, the fantasy sports purveyor completed a multi-billion-dollar merger to become a publicly traded company.
A large part of DraftKings’s success stems from its user-friendly mobile app in which bettors—ranging from fantasy sports novices placing one-dollar wagers to sharks regularly spending thousands of dollars on contest entry fees—select a sport, a contest style, and a game or group of games, and ultimately, construct a lineup of real-life players while staying within a virtual salary cap. Once the game or group of games have begun, the bettor can monitor (often frantically, in my experience) the performance of his or her fantasy squad using live stats displayed on the bettor’s mobile device in real-time.
Aspects of DraftKings’s system for providing real-time fantasy updates are described in U.S. Patent No. 10,744,413 (“Systems And Methods For Dynamically Generating Event Cards From Message Streams”) Referring to the example user interfaces below, “event cards,” e.g., event cards 1305a and 1305b, are displayed in response to live events such as a home run, a stolen base, a strikeout, or any other in-game event that affects the user’s fantasy score.
The patent explains: “By displaying the event cards in the content feed of applications at remote devices of users, users are able to get real-time or near real-time, in-game updates on an event-by-event basis.”
DraftKings’s system also seeks to simplify the user experience by presenting relevant updates in a single content feed. In a typical fantasy football contest, for example, the outcome of a user’s team depends on the performance of players on different teams playing in different games. This might require the user to rely upon multiple other apps or websites to retrieve updates for each of the different games, creating a user experience that, according to the patent, “is disrupted and suboptimal if the user is constantly or even periodically switching between sites or applications to access data related to the same game or multiple games.” DraftKings’s patent addresses this concern by utilizing an in-game content feed “to display event cards relating to players included in the player list of the user … based on the assignment of points to one or more players.”
Claim 2 of the patent recites:
“identifying … a player list associated with a user …, the player list including a list of players the user has selected in one or more fantasy sports lineups …;
determining … that a first event card of the generated event cards identifies a player included in the player list of the user; and
transmitting … the first event card to a remote device of the user responsive to determining that the player identified in the first event card is included in the player list of the user.”
DraftKings’s U.S. Patent No. 10,744,413, Fig. 13A
In my own experience, DraftKings replicates what I imagine would be the excitement—and oftentimes, anguish—of a general manager who constructs a roster of players and later sits in the press box, helplessly monitoring the plays that determine whether the (fantasy) team wins or losses. Patent protection further enhances the experience, as competitors within a crowded fantasy sports industry are prevented from presenting dynamically generated event cards as described in the ‘413 patent. This enables DraftKings to provide a unique gaming experience, affording the fantasy sports purveyor an inside edge over its competition.
Super Bowl 55 finals
The Chiefs opened as a 3.5-point favorite at DraftKings Sportsbook, with a point total of 57.5. Meanwhile final scores reflective of Tom Brady and the Tampa Bay Buccaneers dominating the Kansas City Chiefs 31-9 in Super Bowl LV.
Tom Brady threw for 201 passing yards and three touchdowns, walking away with yet another MVP and ring.
The Weekend wore a red blazer and the color of gatorade dumped on Bruce Arians following the Buccaneers’ victory was blue.