Good year so far for Fantasy Aces

The small California-based DFS operator Fantasy Aces Daily Fantasy Sports Corporation has issued a corporate update claiming that despite the difficult business environment in the United States it made progress in 2015, with the first four months of 2016 carrying on the upward trend.

Between the beginning of January and the end of April, the company claims that:

Total Deposits rose 100 percent year-on-year to $1.14 million;
Game Entries are up 80 percent to 617,000;
Revenue has grown 164 percent to $523,000 and
Prize Payouts are up 220 percent $5,056,000.
The player base has risen to 32,000.

However; the company reported a sizeable operating deficit in 2015 due to a dramatically increased size of the guaranteed prize pools (GPP) contests starting in September 2015 which the company introduced to increase revenue and attract new users.

Concurrent with these higher prize offerings was the deteriorating industry regulatory situation which measurably lowered the user participation expected for these contests as a result of player anxiety.

This was a significant cost in 2015, as Fantasy Aces averaged overlay in excess of 100 percent on its NFL tournaments. Fantasy Aces has made significant changes to its contest creation and management in 2016, and as a result of those changes it has lowered the average overlay percentage in April 2016 to less than 30 percent.

Like other DFS operators, Fantasy Aces suffered a decrease in player intensity due to the adverse regulatory situation that developed across US states late 2015, which impacted both GPP and non-GPP cash tournaments. This initial fall-off of players has largely reversed in 2016, the operator claims.

The improvement has been such that Fantasy Aces claims it has overtaken Yahoo as the third largest DFS site when it comes to daily user tournament participation numbers.

Fantasy Aces CEO Tom Frisina said in a statement this week: “The industry has been demonstrably impacted by the U.S regulatory mood since last fall. Since then, we have witnessed an expected and impressive evolution in the process to adopt laws state by state to fully legalize DFS and to date in 2016 five states have adopted full regulation. We anticipate that the process will continue to advance even more rapidly on many fronts as a result of these initial adoptions.”

Frisina notes that independent researcher Eilers has lowered its previous 2020 industry tournament prize payouts projection from $25 billion to $15-$18 billion, resulting in industry gross revenues if achieved in the $1.5 billion to $2 billion USD range for 2020.

“What that means for the DFS industry and Fantasy Aces in particular, is the Corporation’s 2016 gross revenues will grow impressively moving forward to the revised industry 2020 projection in spite of the lower forecast.

The company estimates that it will award close to $2MM USD in Tournament Prize Payouts in April 2016, a 125 percent increase compared to April 2015 performance, and approximately the same percentage increases are expected in Game Entries (240,000 entries), Deposits and Gross Revenue.

Among its plans for the immediate future is the launch of the Apple iOS App; efforts to capture a major strategic investor; and exploration of a potential full US market listing.

The company reports that the popularity of DFS in Europe has resulted in multiple inquiries from major European casino and sports entities for Fantasy Aces to consider partnering opportunities ranging from white box label technology licensing to strategic arrangements. Fantasy Aces expects to launch European Football (Soccer) and one additional sport to increase its current six sports lineup by another two during 2016.

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