How DraftKings CEO sees the future of daily fantasy sports and esports betting

Posted byby Dean Takahashi
September 15, 2018
Updated June 18, 2025
10 min

DraftKings CEO Jason Robins has been through a lot. He cofounded his daily fantasy sports company in 2012, and he had to pitch scores of venture capitalists before finally scoring venture money in 2013.

In 2015, a DraftKings employee was caught making bets on football games on the rival FanDuel site, using data before it was released publicly. Then Nevada banned daily fantasy sports as illegal gambling, and other states weighed in. DraftKings had to spend a ton of money on legal bills fighting for its life. But with 41 states, DraftKings prevailed in arguing that daily fantasy sports was a game of skill and therefore wasn’t gambling.

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Written by

Dean Takahashi

Dean Takahashi is editorial director for GamesBeat. He has been a tech journalist since 1988, and he has covered games as a beat since 1996. He was lead writer for GamesBeat at VentureBeat from 2008 to April 2025. Prior to that, he wrote for the San Jose Mercury News, the Red Herring, the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, and the Dallas Times-Herald. He is the author of two books, "Opening the Xbox" and "The Xbox 360 Uncloaked." He organizes the annual GamesBeat Next, GamesBeat Summit and GamesBeat Insider Series: Hollywood and Games conferences and is a frequent speaker at gaming and tech events. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.