The Rise of FanDuel's Same-Game Parlay

FanDuel president Christian Genetski discusses the growth and popularity of the company’s Same-Game Parlay feature ahead of Super Bowl LVII.

It’s a simple sports betting concept: Combine as many bets as you’d like from a single game, and parlay them to increase how much you’d make if your wager hits.

FanDuel’s Same-Game Parlay became a smash hit when it was introduced in 2019 and proved far more popular than the company originally anticipated, according to FanDuel president Christian Genetski. And it’s going to be incredibly prevalent and likely lucrative for Super Bowl Sunday.

“The adoption has been much quicker than our business in Australia and Europe where they’ve had this product,” Genetski told Boardroom, “but the extent to which it’s caught on is really incredible. It fundamentally changes the way our business operates.”

Before the SGP era, Genetski could tell how FanDuel would fare on a given football weekend based on over/unders and whether certain favorites or underdogs covered.

“Now that does not drive whether or not we had a good day,” he said. “Now there’s no way to know ahead of the game where the mindset is on people betting in play.”

Sometimes you can predict more obvious trends, like when Patrick Mahomes sprained his ankle in the Kansas City Chiefs’ divisional round win over the Jacksonville Jaguars, but Genetski considers Same-Game Parlay a giant leap forward for the company and the industry at large. Now, the company is working on expanding the Same-Game Parlay+, allowing bettors to combine an SGP with a bet from a different game or sport.

“The hard part with same-game parlay is it’s all correlated activities, so it’s just difficult math,” Genetski said.

He added that parent company Flutter has a decade of experience with it in-house in other parts of the world, which gives FanDuel a leg up in the U.S. market because competitors are relying on third parties to provide their versions of an SGP.

Genetski said FanDuel is leaning into what its customers are telling the company about how they use the product. But there’s miles to go, he said, in terms of ease of use. State regulations remain the biggest holdup there. This year will be about everyone improving on their respective products, with some companies catching up on existing features and others trying to add new ones.

“We have a bunch of things on the whiteboard that we’re excited about,” Genetski said, as FanDuel bettors get into the lab and concoct their best Same-Game Parlays for Eagles-Chiefs on Sunday. “And our customers will tell us which of those are actually compelling.”

Interview