DraftKings is Dabbling into Crypto Payments

Appearing on the latest episode of Decrypt’s gm podcast, Draftkings CEO Jason Robins was asked if his online sportsbetting and fantasy sports platform would start accepting cryptocurrencies for payments. Robins confirming that crypto is indeed in the pipeline. He said:

He said,

“Certainly people want it. Certainly within the marketplace, we should be able to do that. So we’re working towards it.”

The “marketplace” that Robins is referring to is the recently launched DraftKings Marketplace for NFTs, which is the exclusive home to NFTs from NFL legend Tom Brady’s platform, Autograph.

The publicly traded company has been moving in on crypto and blockchain technology swiftly in the past year. In October 2021, the company agreed to a strategic partnership with Polygon to become a full validator on the Polygon Network.

State Betting Laws and Player Protection

There are some regulatory obstacles when it comes to opening up crypto payments. The state-by-state legal landscape dictates DraftKings’s betting activity, with the platform needing to comply with varying legislature. According to Robins, some states might be better suited to start realizing the firm’s ambitions. So far, 30 out of the 50 states in the US have legalized sports betting.

Robins added that the relative newness of cryptocurrencies is an important factor to consider, especially when it comes to player protection. He noted:

“There’s protections that people don’t necessarily have in the crypto space that we think are important. We feel like in order to introduce something like that to our platform, we need to go a little bit beyond maybe where some others in the market have gone, because there’s an expectation from our customer that we do so.”