DraftKings CEO talks Q1 miss & how March Madness shaped outlook
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DraftKings missing first quarter expectations and cutting its full year revenue forecast. Still, revenue rose 20% from a year ago. The sports betting company says a lack of March Madness upsets kept it from raising its 2025 guidance. Joining me now, Jason Rob Robins, DraftKing CEO, and my Morning Brew co-host, Brad Smith. Jason, thank you for being here this morning. Let's start on the guidance. I'm really interested in getting some clarity from you on this. You said you would have raised it if not for unusually customer friendly outcomes during March Madness. Can you break that down for us? Should investors just always expect your guidance to be driven by game outcomes?
Well, not always. I think in this case, we had a pretty historic March Madness. It was only the second time ever that all four number one seeds made the final four. And in addition to that, the first time ever that that happened, and you had three number two and one number three seed in the Elite 8. So really a tournament where favorites were winning. Um, 82% in fact of the favorites won. So that was actually an all-time record for March Madness. Uh, so I think it was a bit of an anomaly. Um, you know, we've heard theories like NIL maybe driving, uh, more of that type of thing in the future. So obviously the models will have to take those sorts of things into account, but I don't expect that kind of favorite run to happen most years in March Madness or in any sport for that matter. But it does happen sometimes, which is part of the great aspect of the product. Customers can really go on winning streaks on things like that, which is great.
So then let's talk about what you are anticipating regardless of game outcomes, especially for the next year here. Sales and EBITDA for Q1 did miss consensus in part due to gaming taxes among other potential headwinds, among a macro uncertain environment here. How are you thinking about the health of the consumer and the impact that could have on your business in the quarters to come?
Well, we included some material on this in, uh, because we knew this was a question on investor's minds. We included some material on this in our earnings release, and it's pretty clear that gaming, uh, and online gaming has also really shown resiliency through macroeconomic downturns. Uh, we we took some data from 2008, the Great Recession, and and we saw that and obviously didn't have US online gaming at the time, but it was widespread throughout Europe and it grew quite nicely through that period. So that in addition to us looking at our own metrics and seeing very healthy customer metrics across the board, and we analyze everything really gives us confidence that we are pretty resilient to any economic environment.
With that in mind, how's that factoring into the guide right now, Jason? And and great to speak with you again, and especially as we're in this period where we've heard TV ratings are strong for the NBA playoffs right now. How's that flowing through to DraftKings?
Well, strong ratings usually lead to betting and, uh, vice versa. So those are good things for us, and hopefully they'll continue. The NBA playoffs obviously has been off to a fantastic start with these games. Uh, lots of great close games. Uh, my Celtics haven't come out on top so far, but still have a lot of way to go, so we'll see. Um, but really it's been a great quality product as we expected, and betting has followed.
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