Posted by admin on Jun 02, 2015

 

Fantasy sports offers great opportunities. To take advantage of the rapidly expanding marketing, you need payment processing accounts that can accommodate your growth.   

Fantasy Sports is Booming

Fantasy Sports wagering is currently legal in 45 states and Canada, operating under a carve-out of the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act of 2006. Legislators deemed Fantasy Sports games of skill and therefore not considered gambling.  Still, most acquiring banks classify fantasy sports as high risk merchants.

According to The Fantasy Sports Trade Association, Fantasy Sports represents a huge opportunity with over 45 million fantasy sports players in North America, up from 15.2 million in 2003, a 10% compound annual growth rate. In the US alone, the total expenditure on fantasy sports is $3.64 billion. Fantasy sports is such a large draw that during football season, 17% of ESPN’s 90 million unique website visitors are fantasy sports players.

Daily fantasy sports wagering is growing at an even faster pace. The largest daily fantasy sports wagering platform FanDuel paid out $10 million in winnings to its users in 2011. In 2014, the payout grew to $400 million. The industry is projected to grow to $31 billion in player entry fees by 2020. Fantasy wagering platforms take roughly 10% of entry fees as revenues and payout the remaining 90% in prizes meaning the industry is projected to grow by 0ver 85% per year over the next six years.

In addition, the fantasy market’s potential to acquire customers from the US Sports Betting Market presents a huge opportunity. Eilers Research estimates Americans spent $160 billion on non-regulated sports gambling in 2013, 44 times the amount $3.6 billion spent in Nevada.

If online fantasy platforms could tap a small portion of the non-regulated sports betting in the United States there is a huge opportunity for fantasy platforms.

Investors Flock to Fantasy Sports

The growth and legality of daily fantasy sports wagering is attracting heavy investment from some of the largest private equity, media, and entertainment companies in the world. In September 2014, FanDuel raised $70 million from NBC Sports Venture, KKR and Shamrock Capital Advisors. There was no valuation announced at the time of the deal but sources put the valuation for FanDuel at just south of $400 million. According to Fortune, FanDuel is considering another round of financing that would value the company at $1 billion. With FanDuel’s estimated payout of $400 million in 2014, its revenues are roughly $45 million, placing its September 2014 fundraising valuation at 9 times revenues and it current expected valuation of $1 billion at 22.5 times revenues.

The second largest player in the industry, DraftKings, paid out roughly $200 million in 2014. The company raised $41 million in August 2014, placing its value at just under $250 million. On April 3, 2015, ESPN’s parent company, Walt Disney invested $250 million in DraftKings, valuing the company at roughly $900 million. The entrance of Disney into the industry adds a tremendous amount of credibility to the industry, painting it in a more favorable light. With estimated revenues of $22 million in 2014, DraftKings’ August 2014 valuation places the company on 11.25 time revenues. The recent investment by Disney values DraftKings on 40.5 times revenue.

The fantasy sports online platform industry is growing at a very rapid pace with a significant runway for growth. The industry is also receiving investment from some of the biggest private equity, media, and entertainment companies in the world validating these growth estimates and the business model.

Conclusion

Obviously, the fantasy sports market is growing at unprecedented rates.  Yet, the industry is still considered high risk merchant processing.  Making it challenging to obtain accounts.

Still, payment processing is available for the industry. With fair rates. And high volume processing capacity necessary for fast-growing fantasy sports companies.

Payment processing for fantasy sports is convenient for players.  And profitable for you.  

Need a fantasy sports merchant account?   Contact info@paynetsecure.net

 

 

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