Expensive day for FanDuel
While the accountants at FanDuel will no doubt see the $20m it shelled out over a bespoke kicking parlay in Week 2 of the NFL season as a big loss, the sportsbook’s marketing department will perceive the outcome in an entirely different light.
An outcome that co-founder and CEO of SportAD Joe Brennan, Jr. concurred Wednesday via X, calling the move bold and a “big flex” of FanDuel’s “sports-Powerball” muscle:
According to the New York Post, multiple bettors on Discord social media platform cottoned to the bespoke FanDuel parlay. The parlay stipulated for a winning bet, every team must score a field goal in the 1pm, 4pm, and 4:25pm ET windows.
With Sunday’s games featuring high scores, bettors backing FanDuel’s black swan parlay had already won by approximately 6pm ET on Sunday. The Post stated the Flutter-owned brand was “flooded with replies of winning tickets at massive prices.”
Hearts and minds
Responses to the Post’s story on FanDuel’s $20m parlay loss reveal how the sportsbook’s marketing department is building brand love by creating engaging parlays at high financial risk to itself.
bettors winning “is the best advertising FanDuel can get”
A message on the NY daily’s site by a user named John Jones posited how the parlay could attract more casual gamblers to “throw in more $$$ next week.” Jones added that bettors winning “is the best advertising FanDuel can get.”
Post subscriber Julius Pacheco said the FanDuel $20m kicking parlay theatre “warms the heart.” After high profile injuries to Aaron Rodgers and Nick Chubb, Pacheco’s take on one of the biggest wins against the house in sports betting history was “a feel good story that we need more of.”
Bettors get organized
While the NFL season has barely started, the on and off field drama is reaching new levels, magnified by multitudes more bettors coming to the party in newly regulated US digital sports betting markets.
The fact that bettors used Discord to share FanDuel’s parlay also reveals how US bettors are getting increasingly organized. The Post shared information about a bet of $1,500 under the X screen name of @JDGoldBoys winning $318,300 on the FanDuel parlay.
GoldBoys and JD formed an online partnership in 2022 offering a paid service for bettors to become “successful sports gamblers over the long term.”