GPWA Times Magazine - Issue30 - October 2014

at the beginning of the baseball season. Aguiar had a lot of success that season, and eventually began talking with the site's founders, which led to a consulting gig. After the 2013 World Series of Poker, Aguiar quit his career as a professional poker player and began working full-time at DraftKings. He's now the company's manager of customer experience. The decision to leave poker wasn't an easy one for Aguiar. But he saw the potential for daily fantasy sports to experience a boom similar to online poker. "The emergence of million-dollar first- place prizes and massive prize pools has changed everything," says Aguiar. Aguiar handles DraftKings' VIP clients, including the company's relationships with the World Series of Poker and World Poker Tour. At the 2014 WSOP, DraftK- ings advertisements were everywhere. When the Main Event broadcasts on ESPN this fall, a DraftKings logo will ap- pear right above the board of community cards on every hand. And several players — including Aguiar himself, who finished 105th in the Main Event — wore DraftK- ings patches on their clothing. DFS is spreading quickly in the poker community, and it makes perfect sense. Even before Aguiar signed on at DraftK- ings, the Boston-based company targeted poker players as a demographic in its ear- ly marketing campaigns. "The growth of online poker several years ago created a community that was based online and that was used to playing games involving skill and money online," says DraftKings Vice President Femi Wasser- man. "It's immediately digestible for poker players, because the concept of playing on- line and playing frequently is something they've been accustomed to for a long time." There is also a smaller barrier to entry for poker players, who are used to depositing their money onto gaming websites and expect to get paid when they win. Poker players pay attention to online gaming news — they know daily fantasy sports sites are legal and their money is safe. "When you talk about broader sports fans, daily fantasy is still very attractive," Was- serman says. "It's just more of a hurdle in explaining what the product is and how it works. That hurdle didn't exist with pok- er. Poker made an attractive first adopter for the community." Wasserman says all daily fantasy sports players have a deep passion for sports. The online poker playing community —most- ly dominated by 20- and 30-something males — certainly fits into that category. But beyond loving sports, poker players like to play games for money. And they know how to think critically and use an analytics-based approach to winning. "Poker players are interested in taking the same intellectual capacity they have for winning at poker and transferring that to another game where you're playing against other humans," Aguiar said. On Aug. 26, DraftKings ran its $3.3 Mil- lion Fantasy Baseball Championship live at the Atlantis Resort in the Bahamas. It was the site's largest (money-wise) base- ball event of the 2014 season, featuring many of the best daily fantasy baseball players in the world. A week before the event, Aguiar said the following on Twitter: "13 of 50 entries in the $3.3MM Fantasy Baseball Championship will be captained by current/former professional poker players. Thoughts?" The daily fantasy sports model is eerily similar to online poker, and the poker-playing community was one of the first groups to take notice of the industry's potential.” DraftKings Manager of Customer Experience Jonathan Aguiar plays during the 2014 World Series of Poker Main Event at the Rio All-Suite Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas. (Vin Narayanan/GPWA) 45 Daily fantasy sports is growing quickly — and online poker players love it