Hitting the ground running last week, new daily fantasy platform Daily Number is now gears up for football season, offering fans a patent-pending platform that allows them to select their own degree of difficulty and subsequent prize, by picking any combination of players – from a lineup filled with all-stars to a roster comprised of role players – to simply beat a preset target score known as the Daily Number (dailynumber.app).
The company is co-founded by Tom McAuley, co serves as CEO, and All-Pro cornerback Richard Sherman. Cynopsis asked McAuley about the state of fantasy sports, opportunities in the market and what we can expect from the new endeavor.
McAuley on where he sees opportunity: The existing products and the marketplace itself. I’ve been following the marketplace since FanDuel’s launch in 2011. On one hand, I recognized that the new daily format that they created provided the first legal framework to offer customers a real money sports gaming product that could be delivered online on a broad basis. On the other hand, in my opinion, the product itself left quite a lot to be desired. So to me, this represented opportunity. I am as hardcore of fantasy sports fan as you will find; I’ve been playing since I could walk. Yet, the first time I experienced the daily format I was immediately turned off — it was intimidating, unnecessarily complex, and tedious to play. We saw an opportunity to create something different, simpler, and more mainstream.
On differentiating itself from competitors: Daily Number is a totally new way to consume daily fantasy. Its backbone is in the basis of fantasy sports, a product that 60 million people have proven they love. The core difference in our game is that you’re not playing against one, or hundreds of thousands of other players, you’re trying to beat a set target score. The second really big differentiator is that we let players pick whomever they want. The player that is their favorite, the best players, whoever they feel is the best team to help reach that target score. Based on the team you pick you receive a star rating, from a half star to five stars. If you pick a team of Tom Brady, LeVeon Bell, Antonio Brown, Gronk and so on, you are going to get a five-star rating. If you mix in some guys who are longer shots or more unknown, you will have a lower rating. That rating effects how much you will win. We’re giving fans the ability to choose their own lineups, with no restrictions, and the opportunity to control their prize.
On Sherman’s involvement: Richard has been interested in DFS for a while, but never found the right opportunity. He did not want to get involved with a company that was just kind of following the leader. We were looking for someone we could build our launch around, build incentives for our players, exposure in an organic fashion across their social media reach. Richard immediately loved our product and the opportunity to engage all fans with our platform. We knew quickly this was going to be an exciting partnership, where Richard could help mold our foundation as a platform and a company.
On marketing and content plans: We have Richard Sherman starring in a very exciting creative campaign where he appears as the King of Talking Smack. In the series, we’ll also uncover several different “alter egos” of Richard’s over the course of several weeks. The videos are meant to engage, create word of mouth and encourage signups. We’ll also be using social media to grab attention, and market share. Moreover, we’re excited to get people playing for Week 1, we think our customers are going to want to share our unique platform with their friends. Daily Number is the only place to play fantasy sports in this format with this level of personal control.
