Last summer, FanDuel CEO Nigel Eccles was running a red-hot startup. Then the NFL season started, and so did a barrage of ads from FanDuel and its competitor DraftKings, and then his troubles started.
The Daily Fantasy Boom Turned Into a Nightmare. Now What? FanDuel CEO Nigel Eccles Explains. (Video)
Most startup CEOs like to talk about how they’re crushing it, but are more reluctant to speak up when things are wobbly.
Asa Mathat for Vox Media
Peter Kafka covered media and technology, and their intersection, at Vox. Many of his stories can be found in his Kafka on Media newsletter, and he also hosts the Recode Media podcast.
The way Eccles tells it, all of those ads — perhaps a couple hundred million dollars worth of ads — acted like a beacon for state regulators, some of whom have decided that the “daily fantasy” games FanDuel and DraftKings run constitute gambling, and should be regulated as such. Now the company is fighting for its legal life, in a state-by-state battle.
I wasn’t quite sure that Eccles was going to come onstage at Code/Media last week and talk about all of this, but I’m very glad he did. Most startup CEOs like to talk about how they’re crushing it, but are more reluctant to speak up when things are wobbly. Here’s the full video of our chat:
And if you want to listen to this on the go, you can do that, too. Here’s the audio, which you can also get from iTunes, along with the rest of last week’s sessions:
This article originally appeared on Recode.net.
