Barbarisi - Dueling with kings: high stakes, killer sharks, and the get-rich promise of daily fantasy sports

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Copyright 2017 by Daniel Barbarisi

All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever. For information, address Touchstone Subsidiary Rights Department, 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020.

First Touchstone hardcover edition March 2017

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Interior design by Jill Putorti

Jacket illustration by Debra Lill

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Barbarisi, Daniel, author.

Title: Dueling with kings : high stakes, killer sharks, and the get-richpromise of daily fantasy sports / Daniel Barbarisi.

Description: New York : Touchstone, 2017.

Identifiers: LCCN 2016052642 | ISBN 9781501146176 (hardback) | ISBN9781501146183 (paperback)

Subjects: LCSH: Fantasy sports. | BISAC: GAMES / Fantasy Sports. | BUSINESS &ECONOMICS / Entrepreneurship. | GAMES / Gambling / Sports.

Classification: LCC GV1202.F35 B37 2017 | DDC 793.93dc23 LC record available athttps://lccn.loc.gov/2016052642

ISBN 978-1-5011-4617-6

ISBN 978-1-5011-4619-0 (ebook)

For my dad, who would have found all of this funny

The bass thumps so deeply that I can hardly hear Rob Gomes as he pours his heart out.

They think I cant be a pro, he spits, rattling off the players who won him a million dollars. I know the game, bro: Jonas Gray? Point-six percent owned. The Bucs D? That was because I know the game. Ive played it all my life.

Its the day before the biggest day in the history of Daily Fantasy SportsNFL kickoff, week one, 2015and Gomes and I are standing by the pool, close enough that Im getting splashed by the couples drunkenly staging chicken fights in the water. All around us, scenes straight out of MTVs old spring break specials are under way. This is Miami, after all, and at the posh Fontainebleau Hotel, pretty much anything goes.

Drinks are flowing, girls in barely there bikinis are gyrating, and chiseled guys with haircuts lifted from pro soccer stars are backflipping into the water to attract attention. Gomes, whose Twitter handle is Big BoOTy Bob, fits right in with this crowdhell, he owns itbut right now, hes only feeling what he lacks: the respect of the professional DFS players.

If you turned on a television set anytime in August or September of 2015, youd recognize Rob Gomes. With his brother, Dave, he was one of the first men to win a million dollars playing Daily Fantasy Sports, carting away one of those giant cardboard checks for winning DraftKings Fantasy Football Millionaire Maker competition in the fall of 2014. Their success was immortalized in a DraftKings commercial that aired over and over and over as the company sought to promote its brand.

Gomes answers all the obvious questions before they are even asked, with the practiced staccato of someone who has walked this conversational road before. Yes, his antics in the commercial are realThats not faked. Thats raw emotion, bro. You cant fake thatyes, the commercials get him recognizedThats why I got the man-bun, so I can be incognitoand yes, the commercials get him girls. We won a million bucks, you know? Gomes shrugs.

The Gomes brothers are something of a phenomenon at this pool party. For a pair of nobodies straight out of the Boston seen in Ben Affleck movies, this seems like the life. Theyre rich, they have women, they have D-list celebrity fame. DraftKings even chartered a private jet to fly the Gomes boys, some pals, a gaggle of pros, and a few lucky regular guys here to Miami for this celebration, a two-day blowout party to kick off the football season. The drinks flowed immediately, and the Gomes brothers camped out by the pool to work on their lineups and gaze at the ladies, soon settling in with a bachelorette party. They have achieved every bros dream.

Yet Rob Gomes is restless. He wants what he doesnt have: to become a pro, to make a full-time life out of DFS.

Watching all this unfold, I can understand the feeling. Im two months into my quest to join the ranks of Daily Fantasys best players, known as sharks, and so far, its looking bleak. It seems like a blast to be one of the big names here, drinking and gawking, on the brink of a potential $2 million checkthe top offering in the weekends main $10 million tournament, the largest prize pool in the nascent industrys history. But right now Im just another money-losing fish, and that doesnt look like its going to change anytime soon.

Behind us, a DraftKings employee urges the pool partiers to be extra-raucous, making for better background scenes for the television show filming out on the pool deck. On the show, a crew of DFS experts are unveiling their top picks for the weekend, offering last-minute advice to legions waiting on the Internet for any money-winning wisdom. Usually, these shows are filmed in studios. All this flesh and frolic makes for a decidedly better backdrop.

CAN-NON-BALL! one heavily tattooed dude shouts, and it takes me a little too long to realize what that means. The plunging bro soaks my shorts and shirt, and I need to dry off. I head inside to DraftKings watch room, the ballroom set up for viewing the weekends football games. Once the games kick off on Sunday, the room is packed with hundreds of DFS players, nearly all male, sitting in groups on white couches, glancing from the massive screens back to their computers as their scores mount. If they get bored watching the games themselves, theres beer pong tables, video games, and free stuff arrayed as far as the eye can see, from high-end food and liquor to giveaways of DraftKings swag.

This is no Man Cave. Its a Man Cavern.

This entire September weekend is a coming-out party for DraftKings, the newer of the two Daily Fantasy giants. They spent years chasing FanDuel, the original DFS megasite, which controlled more than 80 percent of the market less than a year ago. Now the bitter rivals are neck and neck in size. Smelling blood, DraftKings waged a massive advertising campaign to push aheadbecoming the nations top advertiser in early Septemberand the commercials blare constantly all around us on the huge, thirty-foot screens, promising big wins and massive payouts.

To pull off this ad blitz, theyve spent lavishly, like someone had turned on a spigot of cash and no one believed the dollar bills would ever stop pouring out. DraftKings spent $24 million on TV commercials in the first week of September, putting them ahead of brands like Coca-Cola and Budweiser. That spend-first, worry-later ethos trickled down to this multiday party. Theres so much money flying around that even the sharks dont seem to know what to do with it. So they do what comes naturally: they bet.