Even if you don’t play fantasy sports, there is a good chance you were familiar with DraftKings and FanDuel before they were embroiled in allegations of insider betting.
The two companies have blanketed the airwaves, ensuring that virtually any television viewer — football fan or not — has been exposed to their commercials.
According to iSpot.tv, an analytics service that tracks televised advertising campaigns, DraftKings and FanDuel have combined to spend $205.9 million on ads airing nationally across both network and cable from the beginning of the year until Oct. 5. That’s when the New York Times broke news on the insider trading allegations.
From Aug. 16 through the opening weekend of the NFL season, the two companies outspent the entire beer industry.
While FanDuel ran more ads last year, its rival has had the clear edge in 2015. DraftKings spent $131.4 million on ads for a total of 40,283 national airings. Last year, its ads ran just 8,743 times.
Over the same period, FanDuel spent $74.5 million for a total of 21,545 national airings, up from 14,017 in 2014.
The two companies focused much of their ad spending on the most popular sports channel. DraftKings ads aired 7,282 times on ESPN’s family of networks through Oct. 5, while FanDuel’s ads aired 5,644 times.
DraftKings struck a deal with ESPN over the summer making it the official daily fantasy company of the sports media giant. As part of that deal, DraftKings will be the only such company permitted to advertise on ESPN starting next year, locking out competitors such as FanDuel.
But earlier this week, after the insider trading allegations erupted, ESPN announced that it was pulling DraftKings-sponsored segments from its news programming. An ESPN spokesperson said that DraftKings ads had also been pulled from the channel.
How many of those ads will be shown on this coming NFL Sunday remains to be seen, though there is some indication that both DraftKings and FanDuel were beginning to pull back even before the scandal surfaced.