DraftDay: The Only Publicly Traded Option In A Multi Billion Dollar US Industry

TM editors' note: This article discusses a penny stock and/or microcap. Such stocks are easily manipulated; do your own careful due diligence.

The Fantasy Sports Trade Association estimate that during 2015, 56.8 million US individuals spent an average of $465 on fantasy sports participation. From player deposits alone, this puts the size of the industry in the US at $26.4 billion. Look at some of the leading players in the space, and their lists of corporate investors are full of household name brands. Twenty-First Century Fox Inc (Nasdaq: FOX), the NHL, MLB and Kraft Foods Group Inc (Nasdaq: KHC) all hold sizeable stakes in DraftKings. Alphabet Inc (Nasdaq: GOOGL) (via its Google Capital arm), Comcast Corporation (Nasdaq: CMCSA) and NBC Sports Ventures are all invested in FanDuel.

Public exposure to the space is limited. There is an indirect exposure available through any one of the above mentioned publicly listed companies. However, the size of the companies in question, and the broad scope of their operations, mean the impact of growth in the fantasy sports space on their market capitalization is likely to be muted.

A development in the space has just flagged up an alternative opportunity – one that affords a direct exposure to daily fantasy sports, the fastest-growing subsector of fantasy sports in the US. Moreover, the exposure in question is shifting its business model to bring it in line with the current, privately held, leaders in the space.

The company in question is DraftDay Fantasy Sports Inc (Nasdaq: DDAY). DraftDay operates the daily fantasy sports platform draftday.com, which has grown to become one of the largest players in the daily fantasy sports space, just behind DraftKings and FanDuel. It’s publicly traded, and owned by billionaire media mogul Robert F.X. Sillerman – a man renowned in the media and technology space for picking up cheap, valuable assets in high-growth industries and carrying them through to value realization. He did it with a host of radio stations in the 1980s. He did it again with a live music production company in the 1990s. Over the last decade, he’s worked to achieve the same in the electronic dance music space, and it now looks as though his plan is to replicate this strategy in daily fantasy sports.

What evidence supports this?

In a recent announcement, DraftDay reported it is set to acquire the assets of a company called Rant, Inc., which owns and operates a network of content producing assets – specifically, news, sports and entertainment websites. DraftDay already operates Wetpaint.com, one of the leading content publishers in the lifestyle, entertainment and sports vertical, and with the acquisition of the Rant network, looks set to be a true force in this side of online content production going forward.

Rant’s flagship asset, Rantsports.com, is one of the fastest-growing sports news outlets in the US, and has built a dedicated following since its inception. The site’s Alexa rank puts it in the top 55,000 sites in the world, and a number of key metrics rate it as higher from an advertiser’s perspective than industry behemoths such as Vox and BuzzFeed. For reference, these two latter mentioned have drawn capital at valuations in excess of $1 billion each.

How does this play into the daily fantasy sports sector?

The two leading companies in the space, DraftKings and FanDuel, draw a considerable amount of traffic, and in turn, potential player revenues, to their websites through content production. The online media sector is shifting from display advertising to native style advertising, and content such as that offered through sports news outlets serves as an ideal funnel through which to draw traffic, while retaining a native look and feel. DraftKings does it through Playbook – a company owned news and sports media subsidiary site. FanDuel does it through Insider. With its latest acquisition, DraftDay is about to do it through RantSports.

The impact of content production on the number of users that deposit funds with draftDay is not the only thing of value with the Rant transaction, however. Rant’s network is in itself a revenue-generating entity, via its various advertising options. The vast majority of news and media websites derive their primary revenues from advertising, and Rant is no different. As such, its network of returning users is of value to companies looking to promote goods, and in turn, is a revenue-generating asset for DraftDay going forward. Jumping back quickly to Vox and BuzzFeed, the valuations placed on these two websites derives solely from their respective ability to display advertisements to users. The disparity in valuation between these two and RantSports alone makes the latter seem undervalued as an individual asset. Combine it with the remaining Rant network, and then include the DraftDay daily sports asset, and this undervaluation increases dramatically.

Throw in the leadership and financial backing of Sillerman, a CEO with a track record of driving revaluations in undervalued assets, and the opportunity looks glaring.

As yet, however, wider markets remain switched off to this potential opportunity. DraftDay, Inc. has a current market capitalization of just over $10 million, and this may be why speculative capital has not yet flowed into the company. At this valuation, it falls outside the remit of the majority of both institutional and individual investors, and as such, remains out of reach as an exposure, even if it is not entirely under the radar.

For an investor looking to pick up the exposure to the rapid growth in the daily fantasy sports space, however, DraftDay is the only direct opportunity. This fact alone should increase its attractiveness among the small cap investment space as we head into the coming quarters and beyond.  When it does, it can only be a matter of time before the current valuation shifts to reflect something more in line with this collection of asset’s true current value, and further, its potential going forward. 

Disclosure: None

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