S P O R T SSATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 12, 2015

Toronto, Baku mull

2024 Games bids as

deadline looms

BOSTON: The daily fantasy sports industry is eyeing a breakout sea-son as NFL games begin. And its two dominant companies,DraftKings and FanDuel, are touting lucrative opening week prizes totry to draw more customers as more competitors pop up. Major techand media companies, including Yahoo and CBS, are entering thefray, signaling a potential sea change in the still-evolving market.DraftKings CEO Jason Robins says he doesn’t view the new rivals as athreat, so long as his three-year old company based in Boston contin-ues to succeed.

“Having a company like Yahoo or CBS join the industry helps if itmakes games more mainstream and introduces new players,” he says.Flush with $575 million in combined new investor capital collectedthis summer, DraftKings and New York-based FanDuel have been in amarketing and promotional duel, each heavily promoting get-rich-quick competitions through slick ads ahead of the season.

DraftKings is offering $25 million in guaranteed prize money foropening week, including a $2 million top prize and a $1 million sec-ond prize as part of its marquee contest, the “$10 Million GuaranteedMillionaire Maker.”

FanDuel, meanwhile, has guaranteed $12 million in prizes open-ing week, including a $1 million top prize for a “Sunday Million” con-test that it will offer every week of the NFL season. The hefty prizes,Robins says, show how far the daily fantasy genre has come in just afew short years. The games involve picking teams of real-life athleteswho score fantasy points based on what they accomplish on the field.Unlike season-long leagues, daily fantasy players win or lose immedi-ately each week based on a single performance by each athlete theypick. “Right now, you’re seeing an unbelievably explosive period ofgrowth,” Robins said. “No one can really predict where this is heading.It’s exciting.” Cal Spears, CEO of RotoGrinders, a community forumthat’s developed a ranking system for daily fantasy players, says theattention-getting campaigns during opening week highlight themost important single week for drawing in new customers.

“Acquiring more customers enables the sites to have bigger tour-naments and more liquidity, which in turn helps them acquire andretain more customers,” Spears said. Daily fantasy companies makemoney by taking a slice - usually around 10 percent - from entry fees,which range from $1 for low stakes contests to thousands of dollars.FanDuel’s “Sunday Million” competition costs $25 to enter, while afew head-to-head contests were available on the site this week forentries of $10,600 by each player (the winner netting $9,400 in profit).

DominanceMajor players coming online this NFL season could eventually

challenge the dominance of DraftKings and FanDuel, who claim asmuch as 90 percent of market share right now, according to industryexperts. Yahoo rolled out its daily fantasy products in July, about mid-

way through the baseball season. Kenneth Fuchs, a vice president atYahoo Sports, says the Sunnyvale, California-based company has anobvious advantage: as one of the biggest players in traditional, sea-son-long fantasy sports competitions, it has ready access to a sizeablecustomer base.

“We’ve been in the space as a leader for a long, long time,” he said.Elsewhere, CBS Sports is offering its own daily fantasy competitionsunder the revived Sportsline brand. But Jeff Gerttula, general manag-er at CBS Sports Digital, says the company is not trying to go toe-to-toe with DraftKings or FanDuel, for now.

Sportsline competitions will generally involve smaller groups ofpeople, offer more modest prizes and require low or no entry fees, hesaid. “We look at it more as a way to introduce a traditional fantasyaudience to daily fantasy,” Gerttula said, noting CBS is in the secondyear of a promotional partnership with FanDuel (DraftKings has simi-lar arrangements with ESPN and Fox Sports).

Online customersIndustry observers are also closely watching the entry of Amaya, a

Montreal-area online gambling company that owns the popularPokerStars and Full Tilt poker websites. Like Yahoo, experts sayAmaya’s daily fantasy offering, StarsDraft, will have an advantagebecause of a readily-available pool of online poker customers.

The company is also the first licensed gambling enterprise towade into daily fantasy sports, which has tried mightily to distanceitself from the traditional gambling world and even the word “gam-bling,” based on legal definitions. Daily fantasy sports are legal inevery state except five - Arizona, Iowa, Louisiana, Montana andWashington - where they’re either explicitly banned or the law is sounclear that companies generally stay away.

But traditional sports betting is legal only in four states - Nevada,Oregon, Delaware and Montana, according to the American GamingAssociation. “Regulation is a major issue, as (daily fantasy sports)appears to be on a collision course with the commercial casino indus-try,” said Chris Grove, editor of the Las Vegas-based Legal SportsReport, which focuses on sports wagering.

In the meantime, daily fantasy remains on sound legal footing andcontinues to draw seasoned gamblers and novice sports fans. AnjonRoy, a digital marketing consultant in Mankato, Minnesota, plans totest the daily fantasy waters the first time this NFL season. He admitshe isn’t the most avid football fan.

But the onetime online poker player believes there’s money to bemade, so he’s studying up on strategy and game play. “There are farmore recreational players right now,” he says. “I don’t think peoplewho play fantasy have that much understanding of the math of thegame. I’m not saying I do yet. But there’s definitely edge to be had forplayers that do the research.” — AP

Yamaguchi beats

Olympic champ Li

at Japan Open

TOKYO: London Olympic gold medallist Li Xuerui of Chinacrashed out of the women’s singles quarter-finals of the JapanOpen yesterday, as local star Akane Yamaguchi moved towardreclaiming the crown. Yamaguchi, winner here in 2013, beat Li21-19, 13-21, 21-16, to reach the semi-final where she will faceformer world number one and seventh-seeded Wang Shixian ofChina.

It came a day after reigning world number one Saina Nehwalof India suffered a shock defeat to Japan’s player Minatsu Mitani.Mitani, however, was also ousted from the tournament yesterdayby her compatriot Nozomi Okuhara, who will fight fourth-seedTai Tzu Ying of Taiwan today.

In the men’s singles field, two-time Olympic gold-medallistand five-time world champion Lin Dan brushed off a challengefrom fellow Chinese player Tian Houwei 21-14, 21-18.

Lin will face Tommy Sugiarto of Indonesia on Saturday. Sixth-seed Chou Tien Chen of Taiwan downed Parupalli Kashyap ofIndia 21-14, 21-18. He will face Viktor Axelsen of Denmark, whobeat South Korea’s Lee Dong Keun 23-21, 21-17. — AFP

LAUSANNE: Toronto and Baku are still mulling over whether to jointhe race to host the 2024 Summer Olympic Games with the deadlinefor bids looming next week. As it stands there are five confirmed can-didate cities - Los Angeles, Paris, Rome, Budapest and Hamburg, inter-ested in staging the four-yearly sporting extravaganza.

IOC executive director Christophe Dubi confirmed yesterdayToronto and Baku had yet to make up their minds on throwing theirhats into the Olympic ring. “The two cities are still considering and weneed a confirmation,” he said at IOC headquarters in Lausanne.

Toronto’s potential bid is supported by Marcel Aubut, president ofthe Canadian Olympic Committee in the wake of the success of thePanamerican Games in the Ontario state capital in July. But in the runup to October’s General Election the cost and possible budget overruns are occupying voters’ minds.

Canada has played host to one Olympic Games - Montreal in 1976which resulted in crippling debts that took decades for the city to payoff. Baku, one of the also rans in the battle to stage the 2016 Games, isbasking in the success of this year’s inaugural European Games, heldin the Azerbaijani capital in June. But the powers that be in the miner-al-rich former Soviet Union republic are hesitating pitting themselvesagainst heavyweight candidates even if a fresh bid could serve theircase well in the future. The two cities have until midnight Tuesday todecide. The modified bidding process involves three stages, with theIOC members voting as to who hosts them in Lima in September2017. Rome meanwhile on Friday sent off their official bid letter tothe IOC. “The true challenge for the Italian capital begins today,”Rome’s bid committee said in a statement.

“Rome....already has much of the infrastructure needed for the2024 Games in place and will focus on renovation and upgrades toexisting facilities - many of which are themselves a legacy of the 1960Olympics,” it added. Rio beat Madrid in an IOC vote in Copenhagen in2009 to stage next year’s Games with Tokyo chosen to host the 2020Games. — AFP

Daily fantasy sports firms

eye breakout NFL season

BOSTON: In this Wednesday, Sept 9, 2015, photo, Len Don Diego, marketing manager for content at DraftKings, a dailyfantasy sports company, works at his station at the company’s offices in Boston. The daily fantasy sports industry is eye-ing a breakout season as NFL games begin. — AP

TOKYO: China’s Lin Dan dives to return a shot against hiscompatriot Tian Houwei during their men’s singles match ofthe Japan Open badminton championship in Tokyo yester-day. — AP