‘Tis the season! For college football bowl games that is.
In case you haven’t noticed, the games are already underway and the plethora of upcoming match-ups will be enough to keep you busy through the rest of 2015. Heck, you can (meaning, you definitely should) even ditch your New Year’s Eve plans and tune in to the Orange and Cotton Bowls to see which two teams will make it to Arizona for the 2016 College Football Playoff National Championship.
While many of us can’t wait to grab some snacks and cozy up on the couch in our school colors (go ASU!), there are two organizations that probably aren’t super jazzed – DraftKings and FanDuel.
The two daily fantasy sports sites have been banned from advertising during the broadcasts of the semifinals and the national championship. The move follows the NCAA‘s decision to put the kibosh on ads during its championship broadcasts, including the College World Series and both the women’s and men’s Final Four tournaments.
To give you some perspective, the inaugural College Football Playoff National Championship featuring Oregon and Ohio state drew more than 33 million viewers. The title game, along with both semifinal match-ups, were the three most-viewed broadcasts in the history of cable television. In the most simplistic terms, this means the sites are missing out on huge opportunities to be in front of massive captive audiences filled with college sports fanatics.
Adding insult to injury, DraftKings and FanDuel are now also banned from operating in New York. Yet another massive audience and one that brings in a significant amount of revenue for both sites.
Appeals are already in process and for the time being, the site operators can conduct business as usual. But in another departure from the united front the sites seemingly presented when this whole mess started, DraftKings has remained fully operational while FanDuel is only allowing customers with existing deposits to continue playing in New York.
Either way, both companies saw a drop in collection fees and could be gearing up to face a similar court battle in Texas. Looks like 2016 will continue to be an interesting year for the daily fantasy sports industry.
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