Thursday, April 23, 2026

DraftKings Leverages Custom Games to Drive Revenue and Acquisition

DraftKings - Sports - Business

Most company marketing KPIs today include some mixture of awareness and leads in the form of emails.

In fact, according to eMarketer, 80 percent of retail professionals indicate that email marketing is their greatest driver of customer retention.

DraftKings has been able to solve both goals for partners including the likes of Netflix’s Ozark and Marvel’s Venom, finding ways to drive awareness and engagement through custom branded games.

“DraftKings offers partners three things that set us apart from competitors: our customer base, an exclusive environment, and measurable results,” said Ezra Kucharz, Chief Business Officer at DraftKings
. “We offer brands their own personalized environment, whether this lives on our main page or we build out a separate hub just for them.”

One of the biggest draws for brands when it comes to working with DraftKings is the ability to have a complete share of voice inside the custom games that the company has the ability to create. Instead of a one-size-fits-all approach, the company is able to deliver custom solutions around their clients’ goals.

The exclusivity has allowed the company to collaborate with leading brands that include Jägermeister, Netflix, Buffalo Wild Wings and many more.

“Earlier this year, we partnered with Jägermeister for the 2018 World Cup, and we designed a new game, developed a content hub that hosted original content and provided up-to-date information on every athlete for our customers,” added Kucharz. “Our contests and site were fully customized to achieve Jägermeister’s goals.”

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Not only have these partnerships padded the bottom line, they have also helped with customer acquisition.

A true partnership in all facets of the word, by involving external brands in their contests, DraftKings has used the partnerships to reach across industries and engage customers who might not be familiar with the brand.

“Branded contests and partnerships like these have been available to brands since our launch in 2012 and are a huge component of our business and customer acquisition process,” said Kucharz. “This amalgamation of complementary brands helps us leverage each other’s strengths and in turn gives sports fans a more holistic experience. Partnerships like these enable us to work creatively and provide brands with more opportunity to stand out while simultaneously growing both customer bases.”

Now nearly seven years old, DraftKings has worked with a bevy of partners over that time, all of them being aligned in one way: they are all mutually beneficial.

While an engaged audience is great, DraftKings’ biggest advantage when competing against other content and media providers might be its technology.

READ MORE: SeatGeek Knows It Has to be More Than a Consumer Brand

Not only is DraftKings technology a competitive advantage, it is also the area in which the company can arguably scale the easiest, which is the most exciting part for Kucharz.

“We currently design custom games for brands that do not have the backend tech capabilities, nor the user base. Since we built our tech to scale, we can continuously create partnerships like these and make them bigger and better over time. We’re only in the infancy of what and how we can work with potential partners as we continue to grow and scale our platforms.”

Although DraftKings might be looking for your gaming and fantasy dollars, it also has the results to prove worthy of having your ad dollars.

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