Kevin Durant & Malik Nabers Talk Sports Betting & Fan Pressure With FanDuel CEO Christian Genetski

There's gonna be days where they love you and hate you. So, you know, it's just all a part of the journey. And like I said, I appreciate having new outlets to get closer to fans. And quite honestly, you know, that holds us accountable as players, wanting to be on top of our game every day. When you got somebody always putting money on you, always want to see you do well. So I think it's a cool dynamic. Hi, everybody. I'm Kay Adams. Welcome to Boardroom Talks. Love it. Love seeing all these faces. This is so incredible. We're going to talk about sports, sports betting, and sports fandom. With these esteemed gentlemen, we have the president of FanDuel, Christian Godeski, who's a pioneer in legalizing sports betting. Giants wide receiver, of course. LSU all-time leader in receiving. Aren't you a Bama fan, Christian? Oh, this will be interesting. You're coming off a rookie season. You are gearing up for year two. And here's what it says on my card. With a new quarterback. Do you want to just tell us right now who the quarterback is? Who's throwing you the ball week one? I don't know yet. All right. And last but not least, let's hear it for Kevin Durant, NBA legend. Future Hall of Famer. Co-founder, of course, of Boardroom and FanDuel partner. And I guess we should say Houston Rockets. Is that sounding normal now? Yep. Okay. We are here, of course, to talk a little bit about sports betting. I'm going to kick this thing off with Christian because you have been doing this a long time. Most of your career has been geared towards legalizing sports betting. We're there, and it's made it safer. It has made it more accessible for bettors. But there's work to be done, especially in the area of fans and bettors and athletes and the stars. So I would love to hear from you your perspective on where that is, where we're going, especially with FanDuel. Sure. I think I come to this conversation as somebody, you know, to say I've been doing this a long time. I mean, I've been a sports betting company executive for seven years, fantasy sports executive for 10 years. But I've been a Kevin Durant fan for almost 20 years since I saw him at the University of Texas the first time. And I've been a sports fan in general for 50 years. So when I'm no longer a sports betting company executive, I'm still going to be a sports fan. And so for me, you know, I think part of my professional legacy will be legalizing, bringing legalized sports betting to the United States. And, you know, to the extent that is my legacy, what's important to me personally is that in the end, it's a net positive to the greater sports ecosystem that we've legalized sports betting. And, you know, I think there are, you know, I think I say net positive because I think there's a couple of truths. If you're going to have an honest conversation about the pluses and minuses of legalization that you have to acknowledge up front. I think one is that sports betting has existed for far longer than 2018 when states were given the right to legalize it. So we've had betting issues for a long time and we still have an illegal market that sometimes blurs itself with the legal market today. But the second truth is that while there have been a lot of benefits from legalized sports betting, and I'll talk about some of those, we have to acknowledge that it has also both highlighted and normalized the practice of sports betting in a way that's different. And the example I always use for this is I have two daughters. They're 13 and 11, middle schoolers. They trot off to middle school every day with their FanDuel branded Stanley cups with water in them. And their classmates know what FanDuel is. They have at least a vague understanding of what sports betting is, and that's because they see the ads on TV during sports and their parents, usually their dads, talk about the bets that they've made. And that's fundamentally different from a decade ago. That is something that's changed. It's changed because of legalization. And so I think for FanDuel as the leading legal operator, it's incumbent on us to accept our responsibility that we have normalized it, that people are aware of it earlier. I think the benefits are pretty clear and obvious. There are benefits to the consumers. If you win your bet, you're going to get paid by a legal operator. You're going to be able to get your money out. If you have a dispute with your bookie, you have a state regulator to go settle that dispute with. There are benefits to the states. We've hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue that have gone to support critical state projects. And for the sports business, the benefits are pretty obvious too. A lot of direct revenue to leagues that gets shared with players through revenue sharing. There are partnership opportunities, sponsorship opportunities for players and teams alike. And then the benefits to the integrity of sports. There's been a lot of discussion at the beginning of legalization, a lot of discussion about would this have a negative impact on the integrity of sports. And we've had some integrity scandals, but those scandals were resolved quickly and transparently because there were legal operators who were reporting the activity. And I think we're still new in this industry and we're learning, but our responsibility as the leading legal operator is to be out front in these conversations, acknowledge problems where they exist and work to address them. Well, I'll just say we would not be in this room without you, Christian, to solve these problems, to have these conversations. You've been working so hard your entire life to make that happen, so I appreciate you and that perspective. Kevin, while he was talking, you literally said, I'm so old. You said that. They didn't even hear me say that. I said it, but I'm thinking about you saying that to what he said. Your pro career not only predated the legalization of sports betting, but even like social media in a way, right? All right, all right. I don't think you're old, by the way. I think you've got a lot more championships to win. But I did want to ask you just like the evolution of what sports fandom has been and Kevin Durant's experience, like you have a valuable perspective about that. Yeah, for sure. I mean, the experience has just gotten better and better for these fans. I mean, the in-game experience, the teams are building incredible facilities to house these games. Like you said, you get to be a part of the game by sports betting now. I mean, just the experience overall has brought the fan closer to the court or to the field. It's done nothing but, you know, there's pros and cons to everything, but it's added a lot of benefits to the game as well. When I look at Twitter and I just see sometimes you'll respond to fans, even about sports betting and like the onslaught, I'm so curious what makes you decide to, like what is the tweet? Is it timing? Is it like you're in your car? What makes you decide to hit one? It's random for real, but it's more so me just trying to, I want to see you succeed in your sports betting. And a lot of people are just emotional when they put these bets in. And a lot of times they're not doing the research, you know. You should look at the match-ups, the schedule. So I'm just holding people accountable really on Twitter. They enjoy it. It's part of the experience, like I said, the fan and player experience. They get to get heckled by me. If you look back to like 2015, 2014, before sports was legalized and then what the interactions with fans are now, is there a difference? Has it evolved at all? Most definitely. I mean, like I said, you're getting closer and closer to the field of play. And social media is a major factor in that. It's probably the biggest factor. And now sports betting, I mean, it's just made us more accessible and made that relationship more intimate between the player and the fan. You, of course, played in New York, Malik Neighbors. You have this fan market, which is like one of the most incredible and passionate and ruthless as well. And you were at LSU when sports betting got legalized. Can you talk to me about your fan experience? Personally, I only had great experience. I guess every time a fan that plays fantasy, they always come up to me and say, I won a championship because of the coach. You get no criticism. You're like, Mr. Thousand Yards, 100 catches, seven touchdowns. They just love everything you do? Yeah. I mean, I have my games, but I also got some good yards. I mean, they gave me to go over 33 yards, I guess, last year. So that was kind of easy. Thank you. I don't know if we have any of our traders in the room, but they should take note of that. We're setting Malik's totals too low. And I wanted to ask you, Christian, how has sports betting changed the way that people watch games, in your opinion, if we keep talking about just the evolution of what's happened? I think that there's a lot of data that's pretty clear that people who have a bet on the game watch it more intently. They watch it longer. In blowouts, you're still at your bet. Depending on what you bet, your bet may still be in play. For the NBA and NFL, live betting is 40-some-odd percent of the total handle on the game. So people are betting during the game. They're watching. They're trying to continue their interest in the game. I think that's sort of the obvious point. I think one of the ones that – it's not so much watching, but one of the things that I think is cool about the legalization and the normalization of betting is that people have been having conversations forever in bars and barbershops and group text chats about their bets and who's going to win and who's going to cover. And now, because this is a legalized activity in half of the country, those conversations are happening on mainstream podcasts. They're happening on social media. They're happening in the televised pregame shows. And I actually think that's a healthy thing and a normalized thing. These are conversations we're having anyway. We should be having them openly and talking about them and where people can go bet responsibly with legal operators. Kevin, you're a partner with FanDuel, of course. Boardroom, FanDuel, all in the building today here at Zero Bond. Thanks, by the way, Zero Bond and Boardroom and FanDuel for having us. Why did you decide to partner with FanDuel? I just believe that they're doing so much for the sport in general, providing a different experience for the fan. I'm a fan as well as a player. And to have that type of relationship and to be a part of the game so deeply, I just thought it was a cool thing. I wanted to be a part of it, that simple. I'm going back to your Twitter because you're so outspoken. How big of a problem is it for you? Do you take it personally, like not at all? No, I think it's fine. Because I will feel bad when I see something. I'm like, I want to go after that. I take the good and the bad with being in this position. I mean, we get to do what we love to do. People watch us and invest their money and their time and their emotions and their energy into what we're doing. So there's going to be people that, you know, there's going to be days where they love you and hate you. So, you know, it's just all a part of the journey. And like I said, I appreciate having new outlets to get closer to fans. And quite honestly, you know, that holds us accountable as players wanting to be on top of our game every day. When you got somebody always putting money on you, you always want to see you do well. So I think it's a cool dynamic. Speaking of dynamic, what's the difference between in-person interactions with fans and the ones you see online? How different is it? Oh, it's way tougher online, for sure. And you get the real person, you know, in person. But, you know, that persona, you know, it's cool to have that persona when your inner thoughts, you can just put them out there with no consequences. When you see me up close, it's a different deal. And now you might just check your mentions. You might see me in there, too. So I'm just everywhere. You got to watch out for me. Malik, when you hear Kevin saying that, how do you handle those sort of interactions? I just wish I could do it like he did. You should. Sounds like you should. I mean, I be having moments, too. I want to text a fan, but I'm not where I'm at in my career like he is. Comes with tenure. Also, you're hitting all the marks, right? Nobody has any complaints about Malik Neighbors. I still got some years to go. Yeah. I think you probably have one complaint. You didn't wear your KDs today. I heard you were. That was my only reason. That was my only one. I heard you were not happy with that or about that. Christian, your KDs, where are they? I got them at home. I got them at home. Me and my 11-year-old Hooper, we wear them together for her games. Christian, let's talk about how FanDuel responds to player issues in sports betting. What sort of conversations happen when these things arise? Look, I think it's critically important that we are definitive and loud on this issue. We had an incident a couple weeks ago where someone was very loud on social media about how they bet against the sprinter Gabby Thomas and they were harassing her online and saying she underperformed because they bet against her. We acted quickly. Sometimes online you don't know who the people are. This person identified themselves and we found their FanDuel account. They're not a customer of ours anymore. We have clear terms and conditions that address this specific issue. I think it's incumbent on all legal operators to make that clear. We don't want customers who engage in this behavior. I think, to Kevin's point, there's a silent majority who are putting their bet on the game and having a good time and getting a sweat out of it. They separate the outcome of their bet from their feelings about their teams or players. There's a noisy minority. I think it's important that we ostracize that behavior and call it out and make it clear that it's not something we want to see people engage in. Kevin, you're nodding your head. Had you seen that Gabby story? No, I didn't. When you're hearing Christian talk about how they attacked it and eliminated that person, when you start thinking about how do you solve this problem, I'm going to call it harassment, harassment of athletes. Do you have any ideas, any things that we can all consider in this room as we try to keep the convo going? I don't think you'll ever stop it, but address cases as quickly as you can and make your consumers know that you're aware of it and you try to do things about it. I think that's good enough. It's a big world out here. So many people are using FanDuel. The world is crazy out here. You can't police every single one of them, but to know that they care about it is pretty cool. And you're hopefully getting a positive, happy embrace from Rockets fans. Can you tell us about how your new team is showing their fandom for you? Yeah, they're happy now, man. We'll see how it goes. When we start playing, you know how that is. But yeah, I'm excited. New opportunity. Always good to keep playing. I love playing ball, so to keep playing my 19th year in the league is sweet. So I want to keep it going. 19 years for Kevin Durant, everybody. Let's get into the NBA draft. Kevin, give advice to players. Malik, also, I'll ask you this question too, but Kevin, what would be your advice for the new draftees, the new class? Coming into the league, keep your head down and focus on perfecting your craft. That simple. Malik? I'll probably say the same thing. I would just say now your life is really under a microscope. Everything you say and do can be used. By your organization. Great advice. It really is. Christian, as a brand, what advice would you give to players starting out in the league when you're looking for these partnerships like we have with Kevin? I think for us, there's one word we use always, which is authenticity. Our partnership with Kevin, our partnership with UK, they work because people know that you are both authentically lovers of sports. You guys have fun when you're doing the picks together. You really understand what FanDuel is about and that connection with the fan. I think all of our partnerships work best when the people are into what we do. I think that's what everybody should try to follow, their authentic self, when they're looking for these sorts of opportunities. Did you enjoy making NFL picks? What was that like for you? That was the best time of my life, Kate. Commanders went 12-5. Of course he loved it. How did you like that, though, getting to share that with fans? You get to show a different side of yourself. What was your experience with FanDuel making picks? It was good. I'm a fan of the game, so other football fans can get an insight to my knowledge. I appreciated the welcoming to the NFL community. How did you do? I did incredible. Did you? I don't know. I really don't know. 12-5. 12-5! Pick the commanders every week. I don't know. Who decided, two commanders fans and poor Malik neighbors in here, you want to talk some trash to these guys? Malik? Man, it's hard to talk trash. I got my best friend at QB. So you know what that means. He's coming on down. Couple more years, going to get a little reunite. The recruiter, Kevin Durant. Okay, I think that about does it. Christian, any other thoughts you want to give? Look, I really appreciate you guys engaging in this conversation. I think for us to, where we want to get to is, I think to Kevin's point, you're not going to solve for everybody. But I think if, in the same way that, I'm old enough, I'm a lot older than Kevin. I'm old enough to remember when you felt uncomfortable about asking somebody to take their keys if you knew they'd had too much to drink. And nobody feels uncomfortable doing that now. It's just a very normal thing to do. And I think if we could get to the point, and I think it's going to be incumbent on us to work with players and with our media partners and our league partners to publicize this issue so people can feel comfortable to tell their buddy at the game that they're betting with to shut your sports book out and shut your mouth and watch the game. And if somebody's tweeting, people do stuff online they would never do in person. And I think trying to get people to draw that association, I think we can continue to minimize this sort of activity and help people embrace doing it in a fun way. But I really appreciate so much both of you guys wanting to have this conversation. And you guys, thank you for being here. It sounds like a lot of education keeping the conversation going. That is of course what Boardroom Talks Live is all about. Thanks everybody. Let's hear it for our panel.