Remember when we weren't attacked by FanDuel and Draft Kings advertisements as soon as we opened our eyes on a new day? I don't. My goodness. Talk about saturating the market. Completely. We get it. You're out there. We have gambling options.
FanDuel and Draft Kings have become financial monsters seemingly overnight. FanDuel has actually been around in some form since 2009. Draft Kings since 2012. Each is backed by a lot of cash. FanDuel even has Comcast cash. Both have agreements with the various sports leagues. FanDuel is the "Official One-Day Fantasy Baseball Game." Draft Kings is the "Official Daily Fantasy Game" of Major League Baseball. Each banked on the public's ever-growing addiction for fantasy sports and fast money.
Fantasy football has raised the NFL to heights that even Pete Rozelle couldn't have imagined. The fantasy game was around in Rozelle's time but it was just a sad little thing that hovered around the real game. Fantasy football has probably done more to increase NFL revenues than anything that Roger Goodell has done. And that's not counting any of the disastrous shit that Goodell has done to the game in the past year. Yet the owners keep rewarding the guy for supposedly rewarding them. It's a mystery. Fantasy football brings new fans and attention to the game every year. Fantasy football has even grown to the point where the performance of the fantasy teams of some fans is more important than the performance of their real teams. So there's always room for more. That's where FanDuel and Draft Kings stepped into the game. They also landed on a nice little twist. Quick financial returns. Instead of a season-long commitment these new guys have introduced one-day/one-week teams and as a result one-day/one-week financial returns or losses. There's no waiting and no commitments. And both companies are simply burying us with that offer.
Every single podcast that I listen to has advertisements for FanDuel/Draft Kings. Even the few non-sports podcasts. Even NPR podcasts. Nearly every webpage that I check has some advertisement for FanDuel/Draft Kings. All of that is just the starting point. Every single NFL game is just filled with these advertisements. Every single commercial break has one or the other fantasy company telling us again that they are out there. It's a tag-team affair. After a full Sunday of football it's possible that I might have seen or heard one of these mind-numbing ads a few hundred times. That's way too much. I'm not sure that either company is happy until they touch every person on the planet multiple times. That's a stupid goal. The only people that will ever take part in this form of gambling already are or have already been reminded that these two companies are out there about a million times. They just haven't decided to pull the trigger yet. Reminding them dozens of times during a single game isn't going speed up that decision. Just ease up on all of the ads. In all my time as a person I've never seen such advertising excess. I suppose that both companies would have to back away together. They have a lot in common. Maybe they can agree on this as well.
I've never wanted gambling to be part of my football experience. I love football. I enjoy watching any and every football game. I'm not so sure that I would continue to enjoy the game if my financial well-being were dependent on the outcome of the game or the individual player performances in the game. I enjoy taking part in a single fantasy football league with friends. It's always been a fun little side thing. I want to win in that league but it's still fun when I don't. I also know that being a fan of a sport and/or team is a very personal thing. Everyone does it differently. Everyone values it differently. No one way is better than the other. Obviously a lot of people value fantasy football much differently than I do. That's fine. Those are probably many of the people that are signing up with FanDuel and/or Draft Kings. Even those people probably don't have to see and hear these ads the moment that they open their eyes each day and continue to see and hear them throughout the day. Enough already. It's getting much harder to remember a time when FanDuel and Draft Kings weren't drowning me with their damn ads.
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