DraftKings has commended its start to the year as “outstanding,” after recording a 253 per cent year-on-year Q1 revenue increase to $312m (2020: $89m).
Publishing its update for the three month period to March 31, 2021, after giving pro forma effect to the business combination with SBTech and Diamond Eagle Acquisition, which was completed on April 23, 2020, as if it had occurred on January 1, 2019, revenue grew 175 per cent compared to the same period a year earlier.
Monthly unique payers for the group’s B2C segment surged 114 per cent YoY, with, on average, 1.5 million unique users engaged with DraftKings each month during the first quarter.
This increase, says the betting and gaming group, reflects strong unique payer retention and acquisition across daily fantasy sports, online sports betting and igaming.
Average revenue per monthly unique payer was $61 in the first quarter, which represents a 48 per cent increase versus the same period in 2020.
ARPMUP was positively impacted by increased engagement with igaming and mobile sports betting product offerings, as well as successful cross-selling.
“DraftKings is off to an outstanding start in 2021,” explained Jason Robins, DraftKings’ co-founder, CEO and chairman of the board.
“We continued to make progress and remain on track with the migration to our own in-house proprietary sports betting engine, strengthened our content and technology capabilities with the acquisitions of VSiN and BlueRibbon Software, and invested in further differentiating our product offering with the upcoming rollout of social functionality in our DFS and mobile sportsbook apps.”
As a result of its first quarter performance, DraftKings is raising its revenue guidance for the year from a range of $900m to $1bn to a range of $1.05bn to $1.15bn, which equates to YoY growth of 63 per cent to 79 per cent.
Following a “solid performance” during the quarter, this also reflects continued strong user activation due to the effectiveness of marketing spend, well-executed launches of mobile sports betting and igaming in Michigan and mobile sports betting in Virginia, and a modest contribution from recently completed acquisitions.
This guidance also assumes that all professional and college sports calendars that have been announced come to fruition, and that the group continues to operate in states in which it is live today.
Jason Park, DraftKings’ CFO, added: “Our $312m in first quarter revenue, 114 per cent increase in MUPs and 48 per cent growth in ARPMUP reflect solid customer acquisition and retention, as well as successful launches of mobile sports betting and igaming in new states.
“We are raising our revenue outlook for 2021 due to the outperformance of our core business in the first quarter, and our expectation for continued healthy growth.”