Will the NFL Help or Hurt DraftKings?
Football is in the air. The NFL season kicks off on Thursday night, and this has historically been a good time for DraftKings (NASDAQ: DKNG). However, with the football season literally springing up on sports fans -- there was no four-week preseason -- will fans care? Will mainstream fans and casual bettors be motivated to the point of navigating the fantasy football and sportsbook realms that will involve players they really haven't seen evolve in the offseason playing in near-empty stadiums that will blur the home-field advantage?
Last month's premiere of Hard Knocks -- the long-running HBO series that tracks a single NFL team through training camp in weekly installments -- attracted just 273,000 viewers, a brutal 61% plunge over the 705,000 that caught the prior year's first episode. Folks tuned in to watch the NFL draft on ESPN back in April, but that was when there was nothing else to do. With ratings also down in the NBA playoffs and the college football season also getting under way this week but without all of the teams participating, this isn't the live sports market at its best -- and that could be bad news for DraftKings investors.
Image source: Getty Images.
Source Fool.com
