DraftKings is The King of Discord, and That’s a Big Deal

DraftKings has over half a million members on Discord. The market may not fully realize just how important a competitive advantage that is in the fight to convert casual sports fans into bettors.

DraftKings has an ace up its sleeve that the market should be paying more attention to. In the company’s most recent recruitment activity on LinkedIn, there are ads for Community Associates to work on its Discord server. 

It follows news that the company is undergoing workforce restructuring, and honing its revenue funnel to optimize conversion from social media and messaging channels could be a key priority.

In a client note dated Feb. 24, Citizens analyst Jordan Bender wrote:

“The company confirmed to us that it had reorganized and that has impacted roles within the company, but no further comments were made.”

Research by Gambling Insider suggests the Discord-related hiring could be a significant indicator that DraftKings sees growing its engaged Discord community as a crucial weapon in its market-dominance strategy.

DraftKings Has More Than 582k Discord Members, FanDuel Has 129k

Leveraging the success of the fast-growing platform, DraftKings is outperforming its competitors on Discord. Whether it is FanDuel or prediction market upstarts like Kalshi and Polymarket, they are all missing a trick when it comes to keeping up with DraftKings.

At the time of writing, 72 jobs are advertised on DraftKings’ LinkedIn account. In total, its headcount is around 5,700. According to the professional networking platform, 30% of total job openings are in engineering, 12% in operations, 10% in IT, and 10% in support.

DraftKings has more than 582,000 members of its Discord server, putting it far ahead of its nearest rival, FanDuel, with about 129,000. By unifying its DFS (Daily Fantasy Sports), Sportsbook, and Marketplace (NFTs) servers into a single hub, the company has stolen a march on its competitors.

The server consolidation approach appears to be part of a strategy that, at least in part, reflects a shift in the industry away from merely counting follower numbers to instead focusing on the far more valuable ‘sync rate’. 

‘Sync Rate’ is the New Holy Grail in the iGaming Race

When customers verify their sportsbook account by syncing it to their social profile, it allows DraftKings to track activity and, in turn, offer more targeted promotions and services.

DraftKings’ monthly average user (MAU) count is thought to be much higher than the industry average because it treats Discord as a second screen, another product layer, if you will.

Its Discord MAU is estimated at around 15-20% (85,000 to 115,000) of its total server membership, which is significantly higher than the industry average for large-scale branded Discord servers of 5% to 12%.

Unlike the way its competitors use Discord, which is primarily as a place to chat, DraftKings creates a sticky environment through the integration of bots to help provide bettors with information and opinions. Its Pulse line-mover bot is popular for that very reason. DraftKings is implementing what marketers call ‘forced utility’ to keep community members engaged. 

Why Discord is a High-Intent Success Story

Discord has emerged as the high-intent destination of choice in the gambling scene. Originally a place where video gamers could hook up to talk about the thrills and spills of playing the latest first-person shooter, Discord is now the world’s highest-engagement messaging and communications platform. 

For instance, while users spend an average of 20 minutes daily on TikTok, they spend 94 minutes on Discord.

Discord also boasts a demographic that gambling companies covet: Millennials and Gen Z (ages 14-45). 74% of Discord users fall into that category, while 49% of its users today self-identify as non-gamers. The platform’s gravitational pull is strengthening.

In the Discord space, the Big Two – DraftKings and, to a lesser extent, FanDuel – have left behind the so-called legacy brands like Caesars and BetMGM. 

The iGaming market leaders appear to have the Millennial/Gen Z demographic all to themselves, at least where Discord is concerned.

Why Some Stay Away – Discord Can Be An Unregulated Betting Advice Nightmare

The legacy operators are certainly the Discord laggards, but they are staying dark for a reason: compliance risk. There is safety in the old one-to-many comms strategy that depends on email lists and push notifications. 

When things become two-way and conversational, the downside of being accused of allowing unregulated betting advice to proliferate, and the regulatory scrutiny that would invite, could quickly outweigh the benefits interactivity brings to community building. 

This explains why FanDuel’s Discord strategy remains relatively conservative, focusing solely on marketing. Still, it is something of a fast-follower in the way that, for example, it utilizes push notification ‘profit boost’ events to spike engagement. 

Given the fraud and scamming risks, as well as regulatory issues, it is mission-critical for DraftKings to use a tiered verification system. These sorts of security measures help ensure it isn’t facilitating illegal activity and underage gambling.

DraftKings says its rules are strictly enforced through a mix of bots and a 24/7 human moderation team.

Tech-first Startups Underdog and Novig Know How To Work a Discord Audience Too

Although DraftKings might be considered the market leader, it is tech-first startups like Underdog and Novig that have perfected the art of creating stickiness.

Their top-line numbers are lower than DraftKings’ by hundreds of thousands, but the proportion of users participating in daily chats is far higher, at more than 35%. 

This reflects the difference in business models between the peer-to-peer interactions Underdog and Novig require and the traditional betting against the house at DraftKings and FanDuel sportsbooks.

While customers of PENN, BetMGM, Caesars, and ESPN BET don’t have the option of an official Discord server from those brands, it doesn’t mean they aren’t using Discord.

Three of the four largest unaffiliated server communities – Sportsbook, Action Network, MySportPick – have between them about 250,000 users

There’s an online gambling battle heating up on Discord and for now, at any rate, DraftKings is way out in front. And here’s another factor to consider: given the audience crossover from crypto and video-gaming to be found on Discord, its importance will only grow, especially where the new frontier of prediction markets is concerned. 

We reached out to DraftKings for comment on this story. Although we have received confirmation that answers to our questions would be forthcoming, we have yet to receive a response by the time of publication.

The post DraftKings is The King of Discord, and That’s a Big Deal appeared first on Gambling Insider.

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