Fantasy sports, particularly fantasy football, have become fully ingrained in American sports culture, for better or for worse. Every major sports network, website, and magazine has time and space dedicated to covering the fantasy implications of anything that happens on a given Sunday and, even then, some consumers are still clamoring for more information to set and maintain their fantasy lineups.
With such a high demand for this product, it’s critical for a company to differentiate itself from its competition. You must employ tactics that attract customers to your site over others. You need a unique selling proposition.
Recognize Gaps in the Industry
Daily or weekly fantasy sites like Draftkings and Fanduel have risen to prominence (and some may say infamy) in the past year for identifying and exploiting a niche in the already enormous business that is fantasy football. What sites like Draftkings and Fanduel realized is that they could easily target a type of consumer that regular fantasy sites either miss or can’t feasibly cater to.
While there is no doubting that both websites profit heavily from the diehard fantasy football fan who welcomed a new path to fame or fortune, there is one type of consumer that forms the basis for both companies aggressive marketing campaigns: the consumer that wants to play fantasy football, but doesn’t have the time or commitment level to draft and maintain a team over a period of four to five months.
Fantasy football can often be a grind from beginning to end. Online drafts for a typical 12-team league can take two hours or more. Offline drafts, which are more fun because you can interact with actual living, breathing humans and not names on a screen, can easily take double that depending on the format and the amount of *ahem* beverages consumed by the participants. Once that process is done, a player is looking at about 16 weeks of pickups and trades, all the while agonizing over matchups and trying to locate as much information as possible to set the ideal lineup for each coming week.
Free Customers from Commitment
Understandably, some people don’t want to deal with that seemingly endless slog year in and year out, and that’s where Draftkings and Fanduel have capitalized most. Hate the grind of a 16-week league? Here’s your chance to manage a team for one week, and then you’re done. Don’t have the time or patience for a full season? Well then cherry pick which weeks you want to play when you have the time to play them. And the best part? No commitment, which is a big bullet point for both teams’ marketing strategies.
If you play once and don’t win or don’t like it, you are by no means obligated to play again next week or, in fact, ever. It may seem like an odd strategy to let people freely walk out the door, but fantasy football is an experience that tends to suck people back in. Please note that this being written by someone who has sworn off playing it for the past four years and somehow has a team or two every September (I believe my response this season when asked to play was “I would rather die.”)
Now these types of fantasy players have a new option that better fits within their constraints or preferences. Draftkings and Fanduel successfully identified a neglected group of consumers and formed their business strategies around that group, a feat that was all the more impressive given the size and prominence of organized fantasy football. With that in mind, take stock of your own field. Are there opportunities to expand to a previously untargeted group of consumers? Is there a niche in your market that both you and your competitors have been neglecting?