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Jason Robins

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2026-02-12

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2026-02-12

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1. “Category when it comes to that. And then you really want to build your career around the intersection of those things with where the world's going.”

   2026-02-12 · Masters of Scale · DraftKings’ next big bets, with CEO Jason Robins · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

2. “Figure out what the skill sets of the future are going to be and try to manage your career in that direction. There is going to be a change in what types of jobs people need and where the demand will be. So if you can recognize that, figure out how to become an expert, how to at least get initial exposure, once you're down a certain career path, it's harder to change. So figuring out what the next thing is. And then the other really important thing that I think is perhaps even more critical than that is figure out what you're great at. So many corporate environments tell you what you're not good at in your performance reviews. That's important. You need to know what you need to get better at. But early in your career, figuring out what am I great at? What can I really build a career around? And I don't even mean like a particular job, but like, what are your skills? What are the things that you find make you stand out versus others? You're not going to be as good at everything, but you may have some things that you can look at and say, I actually feel like I'm in the upper.”

   2026-02-12 · Masters of Scale · DraftKings’ next big bets, with CEO Jason Robins · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

3. “I think the most important one is get good people around you. Three people can't build a company. You can get it off the ground a little bit, but you're going to need to have other good people. And particularly that initial group of people you hire that sets the foundation for everything. If you get that group right, that will be everything because those are the people that then are going to hire the next concentric circle of people. You're not when you have 30, 40 people, you're not necessarily the only one deciding who to hire. You have other people that are making sure you're holding the talent bar high and you've just built the culture and built the initial team that way. And so we were very disciplined about early on making sure we had a very great initial group that were people that we could see really building out that next group. And I think good evidence of it is many of them are still very involved and very senior roles in the company today. Not all of them, but it's amazing how many people we have that have been around for 10 years plus that are in senior roles company right now.”

   2026-02-12 · Masters of Scale · DraftKings’ next big bets, with CEO Jason Robins · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

4. “Well, it's interesting what you say. There are so many communication channels. Everyone knows, like, if you want to get me, don't email me. You got to either text me or maybe WhatsApp me. I will use Slack, but not as much. By the way, there's people I've seen who can do it. I don't know how they do it, but they're like all over all these things and don't seem to be unproductive. That's not me. I would lose my productivity in a second if I'm monitoring all these different channels at the same time. So I'm like you, I kind of like, this is what I do. I'm going to try to be super responsive on this. So if you need me, you know where to get me.”

   2026-02-12 · Masters of Scale · DraftKings’ next big bets, with CEO Jason Robins · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

5. “I think it is, but also I think that there's an element of there's so many of them, but I don't think most of them look at it as online sports betting isn't something we should have. I think it's how do we do it, having many, many tribes that need to come together and figure that out. It's been why it's been hard to get these types of things done in California.”

   2026-02-12 · Masters of Scale · DraftKings’ next big bets, with CEO Jason Robins · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

6. “A normal state that wasn't this dynamic with the ballot, it would be more so. I think because it's a state where we really need to partner with the tribes and get this on the ballot and get it passed on the ballot, it's a reason if that ever were to occur for elected officials to maybe call on all of us to come together and figure out how to get this done. But ultimately it's up to the tribes. And I think that I'm not saying they don't care, but like they're not as much economically motivated by California's budget gap as they are by protecting their own sovereignty.”

   2026-02-12 · Masters of Scale · DraftKings’ next big bets, with CEO Jason Robins · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

7. “Well, in California, it's all about having great relationships and partnerships with the tribes. California is a state where you have to run a ballot initiative, so a little bit less sort of a political process in the sense of, you know, that, but the tribes really, they control gaming in California doing this without them being on board is not realistic. So that's been our goal in trying to figure out how to do it. I think the best way is for the tribes themselves to come together and lead a framework. And we're just trying to build relationships so that we're hopefully the ones that they want to build that around. And they've been making good progress. We've actually gotten a lot of really great feedback.”

   2026-02-12 · Masters of Scale · DraftKings’ next big bets, with CEO Jason Robins · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

8. “There are different answers in each, but as you might imagine, it comes down to political dynamics. I don't think there's a rational reason for it. It would make sense for both states. And I hope that over time that ends up making it happen. Usually over time, the right things come together and sometimes in the short term, politics and other challenging situations can prevent it.”

   2026-02-12 · Masters of Scale · DraftKings’ next big bets, with CEO Jason Robins · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

9. “Dynamic in that sense, but the sports themselves, I think, are really benefiting from a lot of tailwinds. Caitlin Clark was obviously a huge catalyst initially in college and now in the pros. And just interest has never been higher. So I'm excited. WMBA in particular has really been skyrocketing for us.”

   2026-02-12 · Masters of Scale · DraftKings’ next big bets, with CEO Jason Robins · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

10. “It's been a huge growth category for us WNBA and women's college basketball in particular, but also women's soccer. Some of the fastest growing sports are in the women's category. And everybody asked me, well, is that because you're getting more women on the platform? And yes, we are getting more. It's still, you know, not as many as we hope more male-dominated platform, but that's not necessarily what's driving it. Basically, the same proportion that's betting on NFL are betting on women. Really? Yeah. It's people that just love the sport, which I think is great because the reality is you have more male sports fans. So getting men betting on it and into it is going to grow women's sports. And I think over time, it will bring more women into. I think also, not surprisingly, when people are like, well, is that why you're growing, you know, women on the platform? No, actually the number one source of adding new women to the platform is NFL because just so many more people come in on NFL and that's just going to capture a bigger net on an absolute basis. So it's an interesting.”

    2026-02-12 · Masters of Scale · DraftKings’ next big bets, with CEO Jason Robins · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

11. “Develop that, but I would guess that most of what was done afterwards was really what made it successful. The acquisition itself was just a launching point. I think for us, we haven't necessarily done any grand scale M&A yet. I don't know if we will. I mean, pretty happy with our organic path at this point, but we're always open to different ideas. In terms of like the overall thinking on it, I don't think for us there's an obvious thing out there that I look at that makes sense for us to go aggressively after. So we're really heads down now focused more on how do we build the business organically as we generate cash flow. I'm looking to buy back stock more than buy stock. But that could change on a dime. It's the same thing as kind of saying where you just always have to be looking, always aware everything is timing. And right now it feels like M&A is probably not a big thing for us, but that could change.”

    2026-02-12 · Masters of Scale · DraftKings’ next big bets, with CEO Jason Robins · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

12. “Biggest bargains of all time. And it just shows again that, and I wasn't in that, I wasn't looking at the data they were looking at all that, but being able to recognize this is a trend. People are gravitating towards these types of video platforms, the way people are consuming video and media is changing and understanding that that was necessary and that was a platform that could help them.”

    2026-02-12 · Masters of Scale · DraftKings’ next big bets, with CEO Jason Robins · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

13. “YouTube, I mean, getting a success like that. I would love that. I think that's rare. And what was amazing about that, as I'm sure you recall, at the time, YouTube was mired in lawsuits. Everyone thought it was going out of business. And then Google comes and buys it for a billion. And I remember looking at that and saying, I had viewed this as almost like a distressed asset. I can't believe they're paying this kind of dollar for that. And now look back and bargain at that price, right?”

    2026-02-12 · Masters of Scale · DraftKings’ next big bets, with CEO Jason Robins · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

14. “Somebody that doesn't even exist now. So it's really not about necessarily being the one to come up with the idea, it's about the one recognizing, being able to mobilize and action a team around a clear strategy approach, get the right talent in place, all those sorts of things.”

    2026-02-12 · Masters of Scale · DraftKings’ next big bets, with CEO Jason Robins · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

15. “It's all culture. Culture and quality of the talent that you have. If you have good people and the culture is one where everybody understands this is how we think about this. This is how we approach these types of situations. We talk about being calculated in how we take risks, not foolishly taking risks, being willing to take calculated risks though, and not being afraid of taking calculated risks. And that's a core part of our culture. You talk about being quick and, you know, always looking for the next thing and getting there faster. We've often said that most companies that benefit from innovation didn't invent the innovation. Most of them just figured out before others that they needed to be investing there and they got the right people, had the right strategy, and then they unleashed that talent and they went and they got it done. And that's true of virtually all the tech companies. I don't know who started AI, but I don't think it was Google or Meta or even Open AI. It was probably...”

    2026-02-12 · Masters of Scale · DraftKings’ next big bets, with CEO Jason Robins · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

16. “Percentage of traffic coming on the mobile website that's up to 23, 24% the next year. And we all looked at each other like, this is going to 80, 90% pretty quickly. Now it's almost 100%. So being able to use data and just understanding where the world's going has been something I think that's been really beneficial. And I hope we can continue to do it. Redictions is a good example of that now. By the way, I think we're leaning in there. And by the way, who knows how that'll play out? Anything could happen, but it's one of those things that we kind of just culturally are like, this is too potentially disruptive to ignore. We have to invest in this and we have to turn this into an opportunity. Anything that you don't turn into opportunity, you can turn into a risk for you.”

    2026-02-12 · Masters of Scale · DraftKings’ next big bets, with CEO Jason Robins · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

17. “Google's initial business was search. I mean, if they had just stuck with Search, where would they be right now? I think we saw that with some others that just stuck with search. So it's really something that it's just been a pattern with every company that you have. Technology and consumer behaviors change and move so quickly. If you're not following that and you're not investing in the next thing, then you're going to get left behind and your old business is going to get disrupted. So when we saw that the Supreme Court had taken this up, we kind of felt that way about it, even though initially never thought once about that, never. It was all about daily fantasy sports. And I love fantasy sports. But one of the things that I think our company has done a good job of, and we are doing it now with investments in AI also, we were the first to mobile. We were not the first to have a website, but we were absolutely the first to get to mobile. And the reason was we looked at the data and I looked at it and said, okay, last year, this is our first year. We had single digit.”

    2026-02-12 · Masters of Scale · DraftKings’ next big bets, with CEO Jason Robins · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

18. “No. I mean, when we started, it was three of us DraftKings and it was Daily Fantasy Sports. That's what it was. And I was excited about Daily Fantasy Sports. I was a huge, still am fantasy sports nod. I play in lots of fantasy leagues every year, a little less than I used to these days because of time, but I still love it. And that was what I was passionate about. And I felt like that was a great business to build. And as things evolved, then it became clear, which we had nothing to do with that, the Supreme Court was going to take up this case. We looked at it as, well, we have to look into that. And I think one of the things that if you look at any technology company that has been successful over the years, could be anyone from an AI company to any of the big tech companies, right? They've really been aware of what the next thing is and investing in it ahead of time, AI being a great example now. And take Google or whatever.”

    2026-02-12 · Masters of Scale · DraftKings’ next big bets, with CEO Jason Robins · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

19. “I 100% agree with everything you just said. Couldn't agree more. And part of why I'm a little cautious about, you know, I give you a couple examples, but really overly expressing my opinion here is I do think collaboration is important. I think in that collaboration is important for industry itself to be collaborating. So I don't want to sit here and opine on a bunch of things and others in the industry may have a different perspective on it. I think the important thing is for everyone to collaborate, as you said, and work together to get to the right answer. And I've had things where I had an opinion and after talking it over with various stakeholders, that opinion changed.”

    2026-02-12 · Masters of Scale · DraftKings’ next big bets, with CEO Jason Robins · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

20. “We shouldn't restrict anything. And I actually get that viewpoint in some ways. I think the right answer, though, is probably some sort of restrictions, but in a reasonable way. But I don't think you've got to be careful they don't go overboard there.”

    2026-02-12 · Masters of Scale · DraftKings’ next big bets, with CEO Jason Robins · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

21. “I don't know if I am the right person to answer anything about what should I say. I know, but that's up to the regulators. I think that there's obvious stuff, right? I just think it's probably not necessary, but there's a lot in the middle too. And so I don't think that's really up to us. I'll obviously have opinions if people ask me about specific things. But in a broad sense, I think things that could very, very easily be manipulated we should be cautious with or things that are just like negative. Like, you know, will this player get injured or something like that? It's just not, I just, I don't view it as the right thing for the industry. And I don't really think there's a ton of consumer demand for it anyway. So stuff like that are some examples I would give. But really, it's so nuanced. And I think that's what's fascinating about it. This is, you know, the rules are about to be written and we'll find out, but there's going to be a lot of different opinions. And some people are in the purist category.”

    2026-02-12 · Masters of Scale · DraftKings’ next big bets, with CEO Jason Robins · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

22. “Different ways that you can play sports with DraftKings and having people all over the country drive from that singular marketing versus having to spend incrementally, I think will be a huge advantage for us.”

    2026-02-12 · Masters of Scale · DraftKings’ next big bets, with CEO Jason Robins · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

23. “Exactly. And so we look at it more in that way as an opportunity for us. We've for years had competition. The market structure didn't start this way. And if you look at it, it's not like even by volume, the prediction markets or any more market share if you put everything together, any more share, I should say, than some of the other competitors that we have that are not number one and number two in the space. And I think that could obviously change over time. There's more people if you want to look at it that way competing. But I don't know that that necessarily changes the dynamic. I think we have to make sure that we're developing a great predictions product so that we can compete in that zone. And I like to think that having a bigger suite of products and overall bigger ecosystem of marketing and all the various partnerships that we have, brand that really has been built up with the sports customer over many years. I mean, we're ubiquitous all over the airwaves. And being able to, you know, over time tell a broader story of all.”

    2026-02-12 · Masters of Scale · DraftKings’ next big bets, with CEO Jason Robins · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

24. “First, you have to sort of separate prediction markets from traditional betting. It is a different thing. Obviously, I understand the areas that people see similarities, but it's a different regulatory framework. The product experience is different. And so I view it as a space that we can incrementally add more revenue and win in and add more customers.”

    2026-02-12 · Masters of Scale · DraftKings’ next big bets, with CEO Jason Robins · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

25. “About the category you're in, is that we were in. Kind of a static world until 2018. When the Sup Federal ban on online gambling nationally”

    2026-02-12 · Masters of Scale · DraftKings’ next big bets, with CEO Jason Robins · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

26. “You know, like any new technology, you have to think about those things. And with anything, there's going to be people that are looking to utilize it to win more. And so obviously we want to give people a shot at that. So we want to make sure that we're using AI too to help set our lines and help manage them. I think it comes down to being on top of new technology and making sure that whoever's on the other side of it isn't using a technology that we're not prepared for. We should be using it too. And I think that creates an equilibrium in the playing field.”

    2026-02-12 · Masters of Scale · DraftKings’ next big bets, with CEO Jason Robins · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

27. “Well, we've already integrated AI across many of our customer service touchpoints, and one of the things that AI can do, and I think this is part of what you're alluding to, so what happens sometimes you have a customer that will interact with various people, they'll interact with a piece of marketing, they'll write into customer service, they'll talk to their host if they're a BIP customer, various things. And what AI can do is it could take all the communications, and there's so many of them. So it's really impossible for a human to manually go through all this stuff and comb through very quickly and find any sorts of patterns that we may want to look into. And then we have a dedicated team of people that can review those things and see if there's anything that they think is troubling and follow up that the customer has necessitates. So I think they were just scratching the surface now. Obviously, we got to be very cautious and responsible in how we implement AI too. And that's something that's very important to us. But I think this is a perfect example of what you're raising and where AI can actually help so many people companies are using AI to get people to bet more. It's like actually.”

    2026-02-12 · Masters of Scale · DraftKings’ next big bets, with CEO Jason Robins · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

28. “So we have stats that show here's how much you've spent. We have tools that allow you to set limits at all kinds of granular levels, daily, monthly, whatever you want. We have tools that allow you to say how much time you want to spend on the app and set limits on that. And it's really meant to empower the consumer. And what we want long term is a sustainable customer base that is responsible using our products and enjoying them and getting entertainment out of them. It's not good for anybody if you're not having that. So that's really the goal. And I think we made a ton of progress this year and it's going to continue to be a core part of our mission.”

    2026-02-12 · Masters of Scale · DraftKings’ next big bets, with CEO Jason Robins · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

29. “Well, we have been a big proponent of responsible gaming. We've invested a lot in it. We have a person who reports directly into me, Lori Colony is our chief responsible gaming officer whose sole job is to focus on this. And we made a ton of progress. We actually just released a data sheet which we could share with you showing real data and stats behind what we've been doing. Because it's one thing to talk about. It's another thing to show in the numbers that we're actually doing it. We've had so much engagement with our responsible gaming tools. And one of the things that we're trying to get for people change the mindset of people is you're talking about problem gaming. Those are people that shouldn't be on the platform. And our goal is either through them self-identifying or us identifying them to not have them have access to the platform. But there's a lot of other people that they can play, but they still should be playing responsibly. It's no different than any activity. If you're spending money on something, you should understand how much you're spending. You should have a budget. We have tools that help people do that.”

    2026-02-12 · Masters of Scale · DraftKings’ next big bets, with CEO Jason Robins · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

30. “It is. You got to use the science to figure out which of the art forms are working, but 100%. And I have just too many times had situations where what I thought happened was not what happened. I'll tell you the other thing about the ad that we're doing a little differently this year. And one of the reasons we took last year off, a lot of our customer activity and getting people engaged comes before the game. So we did a lot of advertising going into the game. And then during the game, people are more focused on watching. This year, though, we have made so many great upgrades to our live bedding product. And, you know, that's the perfect opportunity for in the game to try to really take a shot at getting some live bedding activation. So that's really what the campaign will be about this year. So that's a new experiment. For us, we've actually never really tried something like this before where we're really pushing live betting in the middle of a game. See how it goes and we'll learn from there.”

    2026-02-12 · Masters of Scale · DraftKings’ next big bets, with CEO Jason Robins · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

31. “I agree with you on getting some getting some getting Well, it's the biggest day of the year for us. It's a single game, so relative to weeks where there's lots of games. Obviously, it's got to be much bigger on a per-game basis. Just dwarfs any single event that we have. And it's not just big in terms of volume, it's big for us to activate customers, to get new customers. It's just everything is sort of About the super. And then the goal for us after that is to hopefully give them a good experience. They want to stick around for things like March Madness and And NHL.”

    2026-02-12 · Masters of Scale · DraftKings’ next big bets, with CEO Jason Robins · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

32. “Well, it's a lot of work leading up to it. We have a ton of things that we want to get ready, everything from new product features to marketing campaigns. So the week of, I'm here for most of the week doing stuff like this, lots of meetings, watching the numbers every day, tracking things against how we expected, all that. And by the time you get to the game day, everyone's pretty exhausted, but we grind through. We actually give the company the day off after the Super Bowl because so many people work on Sunday and Saturday. I mean, so you're working for the whole weekend, we have people Monday off”

    2026-02-12 · Masters of Scale · DraftKings’ next big bets, with CEO Jason Robins · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

33. “The reality is they know how to do their job. Some things are going to hit, some things are going to miss, but no one really knows until you actually do it.”

    2026-02-12 · Masters of Scale · DraftKings’ next big bets, with CEO Jason Robins · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

34. “Anything could happen, but it's one of those things that we kind of just culturally are like, this is too potentially disruptive to ignore. We have to invest in this and we have to turn this into an opportunity. Anything that you don't turn into opportunity can turn into a risk for you.”

    2026-02-12 · Masters of Scale · DraftKings’ next big bets, with CEO Jason Robins · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT