DraftKings CEO takes aim at bettors who “manipulate the sports betting ecosystem”
Jason Robins expands on highly controversial comments regarding professional gamblers and bonus hunters
DraftKings CEO Jason Robins has defended comments he made last week about professional bettors, suggesting the US sports betting firm is not looking for bets from those who “manipulate the sports betting ecosystem”.
Speaking on the DraftKings-backed VSiN Follow the Money podcast, Robins moved to qualify comments he made at a Canaccord Genuity Group investor summit, where he controversially said DraftKings favours recreational players over more professional profit-hunting sports bettors.
Linking betting to entertainment over making money, Robins said: “People who are doing this for profit are not the players we want.”
“There is definitely evidence that players download and trial multiple apps but then focus on one.
“But the ones that don’t are the ones you don’t want anyway. They are the bonus shoppers and bonus hunters. That’s less than 10% of the audience. They are not the most profitable customers,” he added.
The comments provoked a raft of negative tweets aimed at Robins and DraftKings, causing drops in the firm’s share price, declines which have since rebounded.
Expanding on those remarks, the DraftKings CEO qualified his stance, suggesting the sports betting business did not want to take bets from “professional” bettors.
“We don’t ban people from winning. What we don’t want is the Billy Walters types who were throwing money on one side to try to manipulate the lines and move them one way and messing around with the ecosystem,” Robins explained.
“That’s not good for anybody. That’s not good for the bettors, it’s not good for the operators. We don’t want people who are setting up operations and trying to do things to manipulate the ecosystem,” he added.
Robins likened the practices used by these professional gamblers to those used on the stock market by short sellers, in thinly veiled comments squarely aimed at several groups, including Ark CEO Cathie Wood and Kynikos Associates founder Jim Chanos.
Chanos, a US short seller who questioned the firm’s long-term business model suggesting it was “flawed”, provoked a stinging rebuke from Robins, who questioned Chanos’ investment track record.
“When people are short selling and dumping shares, only so their other hedge fund buddies can try to buy it back at a cheaper price, that’s not really how it’s meant to work,” Robins explained.
“People want to make a bet on the stock market, no pun intended, buy it at a fair price and they think this is a good deal, fine. What I don’t like is when people are manipulating things, I think that’s not the spirit of the game and it’s not in the spirit of the stock market, either” he added.
DraftKings is currently facing challenges on a number of fronts, in the courts via several lawsuits, the challenges of coping with an increasingly competitive US market and increasing distance between itself and rival operators FanDuel and BetMGM.
However, Robins remained upbeat: “There are a lot of factors that play in but what I will say is, I am very confident in the strategy we have. I’m very confident in the team, I’m very confident in the roadmap and the things that we have planned and I really, truly believe that those are going to create a lot of value.”