Earnings Labs

DraftKings Inc. (DKNG)

Q4 2020 Earnings Call· Fri, Feb 26, 2021

$23.32

-0.85%

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by, and welcome to the DraftKings' Q4 2020 Earnings Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After the speaker presentation, there will be a question-and-answer session. [Operator Instructions]. Please be advised that today’s conference is being recorded. [Operator Instructions]. I would now like to hand the conference to your speaker today, Stanton Dodge, Chief Legal Officer. Please go ahead, sir.

Stanton Dodge

Analyst

Good morning, everyone, and thanks for joining us today. Statements we make during this call that are not statements of historical facts constitute forward-looking statements that are subject to risks, uncertainties, and other factors that could cause our actual results to differ materially from our historical results or from our forecast. We assume no responsibility for updating forward-looking statements. For more information, please refer to the risks, uncertainties, and other factors discussed in our SEC filings. During the call, management will also discuss certain non-GAAP measures that we believe may be useful in evaluating DraftKings' operating performance. These measures should not be considered in isolation or as a substitute for DraftKings' financial results prepared in accordance with GAAP. A reconciliation of these non-GAAP measures to the most directly comparable GAAP measures is available in our annual report on Form 10-K filed today with the SEC and in our earnings presentation which is available on our Web site at investors.draftkings.com. Hosting the call today, we have Jason Robins, Co-Founder, Chief Executive Officer, and Chairman of DraftKings, who will share some opening remarks and an update on our business; and Jason Park, Chief Financial Officer of DraftKings, who will provide a review of our financials. We will then open up the line to questions. I will now turn the call over to Jason Robins.

Jason Robins

Analyst

Good morning, everyone. Before I begin my remarks, I would like to let everyone know that we published our first ESG report on Monday, February 22. The purpose of this report is to share with our stakeholders how we think about different environmental, social and governance factors, and highlight those that are most relevant to our business. We are committed to creating a long-term positive impact for our stakeholders and ensuring that we are aligned with our shareholders. Our Board and management team are also committed to further integrating ESG considerations into how we set and reach our goals. The report discusses the key ESG topics that impact our operations and stakeholders. These topics include, among others, human capital management and responsible gaming. Our business success is driven by our highly skilled workforce. We believe it is very important to create and foster a culture of inclusion and belonging that makes each of our employees feel engaged, empowered and safe. In addition, DraftKings became a flagship brand by providing a responsible way for gaming and sports enthusiasts to interact with our products, and we continue to lead and innovate in all areas of responsible gaming. Our ESG report is posted on our Investor Relations site. This is the first step of our ESG journey. We look forward to working together to achieve meaningful environmental, social and governance progress. On today's call, we will cover the following topics. First, I will share some insights into our accomplishments for the full-year and fourth quarter. Next, I will provide an update on our recent state launches. Third, I will provide an update on the migration to our in-house proprietary sports betting engine as well as updates on some other important marketing and product-related initiatives. 2020 was a remarkable year for DraftKings. I couldn't…

Jason Park

Analyst

Thank you, Jason, and good morning, everyone. Before I begin, I want to remind everyone that we will be discussing our results on a combined company pro forma basis to improve comparability as if the business combination had closed on January 1, 2019. Pro forma means that we are including B2B for the year ended December 31 for both 2019 and 2020, rather than just from April 24 through December 31, 2020. We are pleased to announce that we generated 644 million in revenue for the full-year, representing a 49% increase versus fiscal year 2019 revenue of 432 million. Q4 revenue was 322 million, representing a 98% increase versus Q4 2019 revenue of 163 million. These incredible results were despite the impact that COVID-19 had on our business in 2020, in particular in Q2. Our B2C business, which includes our core product offerings of daily fantasy sports, online sports book and iGaming performed extremely well this year as we launched OSB in four new states in iGaming in two new states. In addition, as Jason mentioned, we are continuing to see triple digit year-over-year growth in New Jersey handle, even though we have been live for two and a half years, which really speak to the continued adoption of these exciting product offerings. Our B2C business generated $539 million for the full-year, representing a 67% increase versus prior year and Q4 revenue of 291 million, representing 122% growth. B2C monthly unique payers in the quarter increased 44% year-over-year to 1.5 million. The increase reflects strong unique payer retention and acquisitions across DFS, OSB and iGaming. For the full-year of 2020, MUPs increased 29% which includes the impact of COVID-19 on our MUPs for sports book and DFS primarily during the second quarter and early in the third quarter. Average revenue…

Stanton Dodge

Analyst

Operator, you can open the line up for questions, please. Operator?

Operator

Operator

[Operator Instructions]. And our first question comes from the line of Ryan Sigdahl from Craig-Hallum. Your line is now open.

Ryan Sigdahl

Analyst

Great. Good morning, guys, and congrats on the strong results and business trends.

Jason Robins

Analyst

Thank you.

Ryan Sigdahl

Analyst

Very helpful commentary on guidance for 2021. Just high level thinking EBITDA on a dollar basis directionally flattish, better, worse, anything you can comment there? And then we'll kind of back in to all the other details between there.

Jason Robins

Analyst

We're not providing guidance for EBITDA in 2021, just top line guidance. The reason we're not providing guidance is it's hard to predict what new states will open up. And also we generally are flexible in terms of how we flex up or down our customer acquisition investment, depending on how results are coming in. So it's really tough for us to guide to that at this point. For that reason, we are choosing not to.

Ryan Sigdahl

Analyst

Gotcha. Gotcha. Then I appreciate the color on New Jersey. I believe I caught right that state level contribution margin is positive, just to confirm that? And then secondly, how are you seeing other states ramp? Similar path, better, worse in Michigan, Tennessee, Virginia, some of these newer ones expect better than kind of the New Jersey cadence?

Jason Robins

Analyst

You're correct. New Jersey was contribution positive in 2020, and that was despite no sports or no traditional sports that we saw for a few months in Q2 and late Q1. I think it would have been even better have we had a full sports calendar for the year, although we did make some of that back up in the back half of the year with strong performance in some additional sports games on NBA and NHL that wouldn't have otherwise been played at that time of the year. As far as the other states, it's definitely been a variety. I think if you look at sort of the average, it's quite similar to what we're seeing in New Jersey on a per capita basis. But certainly, there's variation state to state. Michigan, in particular, was very strong on both sports betting and iGaming. Tennessee was pretty strong. Virginia was close to New Jersey, but not quite. But I think Virginia also, it's a bit of a different setup, because it launched around the same time with Michigan. It didn't have iGaming, but certainly did contribute in Virginia. And unlike Tennessee, it launched for us at least the day of the Conference Championship Game. So we only got a little bit at the tail end of the NFL in there whereas Tennessee launched in Q4. So we have quite a bit of ramp to be able to acquire customers and generate revenue during NFL.

Ryan Sigdahl

Analyst

Great. One more quick one for me and then I'll hop back in the queue. Just on the SBTech and tech integration. Are you planning to do a partial conversion in state by state or are you planning to go all live? And then have you started this process where you have anything to point to? Thanks and good luck. Congrats on the results again.

Jason Robins

Analyst

Thank you. So what we have been doing is we've done a pilot in Ireland. That was not necessarily, for any reason, other than just to get our team accustomed to the new interface and be able to use the tools and all those sorts of things. And the next step we'll be doing is we're going to choose a state in the U.S. to do a launch and make sure everything's working and work out any kinks. And at that point, we'll be comfortable rolling it out to the rest of the country.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. And our next question comes from the line of Jed Kelly from Oppenheimer. Your line is now open.

Jed Kelly

Analyst

Great. Thanks for taking my questions. Two if I may. Just Jason, one on product. I mean, some of your competitors are offering same game parlays and another one has thought around lightning bet. So how do you think about product differentiation? And then just on the guidance, if you look back in 2019, New Jersey had a pretty significant March around the NCAA tournament. So how should we be factoring in the NCAA tournament around the cadence between 1Q and 2Q? Thank you.

Jason Robins

Analyst

The question you asked on product, this underscores exactly why we thought it was so important to have our own in-house technology and trading platform, which we acquired along with the business combination back in April of last year. I think this is like, you mentioned same game parlays, that's something that we look to add hopefully shortly after migrating this NFL season, maybe at the migration, depending on the timing of it, but we want to have that ready for this NFL season at the point of migration. And I think one of the reasons that we feel like we've been doing so well on iGaming is we have been actually innovating on products, launching our own games, as we mentioned, more than three quarters of our games in Michigan – I’m sorry, more than three quarters of our revenue in Michigan were generated off of DraftKings in-house created game. And we haven't migrated yet. So while we've been very pleased and have only positive things to say about Kambi, our current partner, we do think that there's just no substitute for a company like ours. It’s a great product and technology-driven between having a reliance on a third-party versus having full control over your own product. And I think what we'll see is, first, a couple of things with the migration, but really it's going to be about what we do over the next year or two or three. Like this is an area I feel very confident that we will generate meaningful progress in over the next few years. It's what we do and really core to our DNA. So I'm excited about it. And I think it's going to be something that we'll really start to be able to talk more about in the back half of the year.

Jed Kelly

Analyst

Is that on the NCAA tournament?

Jason Robins

Analyst

Sorry. Can you ask the question one more time?

Jed Kelly

Analyst

Just if you look back in 2019, New Jersey had a pretty solid month around March Madness and the NCAA tournament. Just how are you figure-factoring in the NCAA tournament in 1Q relative to 2Q?

Jason Robins

Analyst

I’m going to let Jason Park answer any more granularity. But I will say at a high-level, this is one of the real key times for betters, it's a very popular thing to bet on. It's actually quite different than fantasy. For fantasy, college basketball, college sports, in general, while certainly there's some activity that spikes during the NCAA tournament, it's nothing like we see in betting. So with so many new states, I think, you'll see a lot more there. Jason, I don't know if you want to add anything specific beyond that. But I think that that's the high level how I would describe it.

Jason Park

Analyst

Yes. And hey, Jed, great to hear your voice. I agree. I mean, we've certainly thought a lot about March Madness. A, part of the tournament will be in Q1, part of it will be in Q2. We've thought about that. And when we look back, we've only had one state with OSB live for March Madness, given the canceled event last year. So we've incorporated that all into the guidance that we provided today.

Jed Kelly

Analyst

Thank you, and congrats on the results.

Jason Robins

Analyst

Thank you, Jed.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. And our next question comes from Ben Chaiken from Credit Suisse. Your line is now open.

Ben Chaiken

Analyst

Hey. How’s it going?

Jason Robins

Analyst

Hi, Ben.

Ben Chaiken

Analyst

I know you mentioned on March – hey, how’s it going? I know you mentioned on March 1, there's a unique opportunity, right, with Google Play allowing iGaming and OSB apps -- sorry, not OSB apps, but iGaming and OSB apps. I guess with the understanding that maybe 40% of U.S. smartphones or Androids, is there any way to specifically target those customers? Or do you think that they were already using some workaround? Just any thought there?

Jason Robins

Analyst

Sure. So there's a couple of things. First, Google Play does have an advertising product that if you don't have an app in Google Play, obviously it doesn't make sense to use. So just like we spent on iAds and the App Store, we expect to acquire customers via that channel once we're able to launch. Secondly, we do have people that side load the app now. It's a little bit of a clunky experience. You get like a message saying something along the lines of this is not safe or not approved. And so there's a -- it's a little bit of a clunky experience. It's not the easiest UI. So I think that should improve in terms of more people having Android -- that have Android phones, having the app on their phone, and even amongst the existing customers. Although I would say, probably the majority of customers now have figured out how to side load the app through some of the UIs that we built. A couple more points I'd make. One is, we talked a lot about our highest rated products in both iOS and Android on VFS and for iOS in the App Store on online sports book and iGaming. The reason we don't mention it on Android is it's not in the Google Play Store. So very important to us is to deliver a quality product. We think we have one and we look forward to getting feedback and ratings on that, which will hopefully help solidify our reputation as having a strong product. Secondly, there will be I think two states, I want to say Michigan and Virginia, that weren't added initially, we're hopeful that they'll get added later. But that does create a bit of a clunky experience as well, because users in those states will still have to side load the app, and it's actually really hard to create a UI that's very state specific on that front. So we're working hard to do it so that we can get live in the states that were approved from March 1, but hopeful that Google will approve those additional states. And what we'd like to ideally see is they just kind of set policy where any state that has legal, regulated sports betting and iGaming is automatically included in the policy.

Ben Chaiken

Analyst

Got you. That's super helpful. And then one more, if I may. I guess just talk about what you're doing to prepare for Canada. That's hopefully the next major catalyst or addition to the business. I know you mentioned an NFL DFS partnership. Not sure if there's anything else to share or expand on there. Just curious, how you plan to hit the ground running or if there's any stats you can share around penetration and traction in that market?

Jason Robins

Analyst

Well, you're absolutely right. Canada is going to present a really exciting opportunity should it open up. We see really good progress there, both the federal and province level in Ontario legislatively. Ontario, as you probably know, is the largest province. I believe it's somewhere in the neighborhood of 45% of the population of Canada. So to get any province, that was the one to get first so very excited about that. We're hoping additional provinces follow suit, but haven't really seen whether that is the case yet. I think that first and foremost the legislation had to move along and we're seeing that. There's a lot left up to the regulator. It's a little bit different than U.S. legislation where there's a lot of detail in the legislation in Ontario. It's really kind of a line or two, maybe not quite that little but very much left up to the regulator on what the rules of the road are. So we are waiting for regulations. I know those are being worked on by the Ontario government. So once we get that, we'll have a better sense of what timing could be, what sort of product could look like and things like that. And as far as preparing, you mentioned the NFL -- expansion of our NFL deal in Canada, we're very excited about that. We have been doing marketing in Canada for quite some time. We have a very large daily fantasy sports customer base. Ontario, obviously being our biggest province in terms of customer base, so we feel very well prepared both to convert our existing daily fantasy customer base as well as to expand what we're doing with the existing marketing channels that we utilize in Canada.

Ben Chaiken

Analyst

Cool. I appreciate it. Thank you.

Jason Robins

Analyst

Thank you.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. And our next question comes from Michael Graham from Canaccord. Your line is now open.

Michael Graham

Analyst

Thanks and congrats on great numbers. I have two questions, the first just on ARPMUP expansion. You mentioned engagement and cross selling. Just wondering, is that really just between your OSB and iGaming products or just what can you tell us about what really drove that? And sort of you mentioned it, you expected ARPMUP to expand but more slowly than players in 2021, but just maybe touch on that. And then I have a follow up. Thanks.

Jason Robins

Analyst

Thank you. So a few things going to ARPMUP. One is the cross selling and it's really across all of our products, certainly sports book to iGaming is one but we cross sell between all of them. We cross sell DFS. Certainly the sports book and iGaming we cross sell back to DFS from people who get acquired on sports book or iGaming and we cross sell people who get acquired on iGaming to sports book. So I think that it's really -- the way we think about it is we have a platform. We try to target segments of customers to bring them on -- potential customers to bring them on in the most efficient manner possible. And then once they're on the platform, we try to get them to engage with all of our products. And it's really about optimizing across all things that we offer. The other factor in ARPMUP which enables what I just described is just more states opening up. And one of the reasons that we have said that we expect users to expand more than ARPMUP is in our guidance, we have not included any new states that we’re not already in. So last year, obviously, there were several states that launched. And I think if you were to see new states launch in 2021, we would expect faster growth in ARPMUP. But right now, we don't have any line of sight to that. There's obviously a lot of exciting things happening on the legislative front with almost 20 states considering new sports betting legislation to open up and I think four or five -- four I think considering iGaming legislation. So hopefully, we'll get see some of those get done. I don't know, even if they do get done if they’ll launch this year or next year. So once we get more line of sight to that, then we'll be able to have more of a view on how that might impact ARPMUP throughout the year. But right now, in all of our guidance, including your question on ARPMUP, we're not including any of these states.

Michael Graham

Analyst

Okay, thanks. And then I just wanted to ask a quick one on college sports. Just what impact do you think college sports had on your performance in Q3, Q4 and sort of how important is that relative to professional sports?

Jason Robins

Analyst

College sports in sports book are big. They're not that big in daily fantasy sports, but they are really important on sports book. So it certainly was something that we didn't know would happen. We were a little bit conservative in our last couple of quarters’ guidance and thinking through, would we have full college sports calendars? Would we have all conferences playing? At the time, for example, we guided in our Q3 call, at least two of the conferences had basically said they were shutting down the season. They ended up starting, which is great. So it certainly was a boost to see that. And I wouldn't say it was the number one thing, but it was a material factor, sure.

Michael Graham

Analyst

Okay. Thank you, Jason.

Jason Robins

Analyst

Thank you.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. And our next question comes from Thomas Allen from Morgan Stanley. Your line is now open.

Thomas Allen

Analyst

Hi. Good morning.

Jason Robins

Analyst

Good morning.

Thomas Allen

Analyst

So when I look at the fourth quarter revenue results, they beat your guidance. But I think some of us expected that to happen, given the strength of the state reported data. But revenue beat the Street by a considerable amount. Do you think we were not appreciating the strength of the DFS business, the Colorado and Tennessee business where data is not, like your market share is not disclosed or the decline in promos? Can you talk about kind of what the strength of those things were?

Jason Robins

Analyst

So about half of the beat came from things that were assumptions we made that literally all broke our way. Obviously that's not going to happen all the time. And that includes things like full sports calendar being played with no rescheduling into next year of NFL games. We thought there was a possibility that certain games might get moved from Q4 into Q1. It didn't happen. We also saw that, as was mentioned earlier, all college sports were played. The biggest one was hold, came in higher. That's obviously something that can swing either way. And Q3, as you may recall, hold was really bad to start the NFL season and we just barely beat our numbers. So that was a pretty big factor. I think the biggest factor with hold came in higher than expected. And that's just based on sport games outcomes, but not anything we were doing in particular, and I think it was higher across the board for the whole industry. Another one was we did not make the assumption that the Illinois executive order that allowed for mobile registration would get continued. Obviously, that's something that's not within our control and we don't know, so we weren't counting on it. That ended up getting continued not just through the end of the year, but through the Super Bowl and we're hopeful it gets extended again. There's a lot of things that really broke our way. And then the rest of it was business over performance. And as far as your question, Tennessee was definitely a big factor. Tennessee, we didn't know before it launched, but ended up being one of the strongest starts of any state. So that was really great to see. And then I think -- which is why we've been a…

Thomas Allen

Analyst

Thanks, Jason. You answered my first follow up question, which was it did look like 4Q '21 revenue guidance was conservative, about flattish but I think you gave good color there. So have you seen – on free play, right? So when we think about the kind of promotional side, have you seen some rationalization on free play? We can see what you're spending on marketing, but it's harder to read into free play.

Jason Robins

Analyst

Yes. I think that what we're seeing – you’re talking about like promotional spend or specifically for --

Thomas Allen

Analyst

Yes, promotional spending.

Jason Robins

Analyst

So similar to external marketing, advertising spend, we're very much data driven on that and it's seasonal. We're more aggressive on promos in periods where we're more heavily acquiring new customers. And if you look at sort of the breakdown between where promo spend goes, a much higher percentage of new customer gross revenue goes to promos than existing customer. The most aggressive offers are the new customer offers. So what you will see, and you started to see this a little bit in Q4, is as the mix of customers shifts from more new customers to more existing customers, then you will see a natural decline in the rate of promo.

Thomas Allen

Analyst

Thanks.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from Kevin Rippey from Evercore ISI. Your line is now open.

Kevin Rippey

Analyst

Hi. Thanks for taking the question, guys. Really just two. If you could give any more color about the contribution of iGaming relative to OSB specifically in the states where both are legal in terms of how many -- what percentage of players play both, those kind of things, that'd be really helpful? And then maybe just a little bit more to on the gross margin benefits of iGaming or I guess gross margin differentials between iGaming and sports betting and how we should think about that as we think about the longer-term model. I appreciate it. Thank you.

Jason Robins

Analyst

So we are cross selling over 50% of our sports betting customers into iGaming. And it's a very important product. I believe it's probably a larger market if there were -- on a state level, it's a larger market, certainly we saw that in Michigan. We're seeing that albeit it’s on a different lifecycle timeline in New Jersey. And I think it's probably safe to say that it's a larger market. We're going to have more color on that. We have an Investor Day coming up in early March that we will talk more about how we view the size of each of the relative market. As far as gross margin impact, it's really hard to say. We don't really allocate promotional dollars by product, because people can use them across the platform. So it's in thinking on like things like payment processing fees. People may deposit and play one particular product first and then play another. So it's hard to say, this deposit should have been allocated to this product or that product. So it's not really something where we see a distinction. We view both iGaming and sports betting as having very similar gross margins, if you kind of don't distinguish, and as I said, it’s sort of impossible to distinguish, where deposit payment processing fees and promotional dollars and things like that are coming in on. They're actually remarkably similar in terms of their margin profile.

Kevin Rippey

Analyst

All right, great. And maybe just one more. One thing I hear a lot about is on iOS, like the iOS 14 IDFA changes, certainly impact as it relates to that with respect to your app install campaigns or anything on the marketing front that we’re still thinking about that you guys might have to navigate in like the first half of the year?

Jason Robins

Analyst

I actually don't exactly know the detail on that. But what I can say to you is that we knew about this. We've been preparing for it. We, generally speaking, don't view it as having a massive impact, but it will have some impact. But I think most of what we've done has not really changed based on those regulations.

Kevin Rippey

Analyst

Great. Thanks, guys.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. And our next question comes from Stephen Grambling from Goldman Sachs. Your line is now open.

Stephen Grambling

Analyst

Hi. Thanks for taking the questions. Just thinking about the engagement in the app, I guess first, what is the average number of bets your typical customer makes a year? And how long is the average time on device per better login? And then second, as you look across more mature versus new states, how are those two trends, frequency and time spent on device evolving?

Jason Robins

Analyst

We haven't disclosed anything around average bets or time. We certainly can consider adding some of that material to our Investor Day. But I would be lying to you if I told you I actually knew the answer right off my hand anyway. So beyond not disclosing it, I couldn't tell you but something we can look into and consider talking about on Investor Day. As far as new versus existing states, we’re seeing very similar median and average performance. There is obviously some variation state to state, but virtually across all the metrics we look at, whether it’d be revenue, active players, retention rates, engagement in time and app, average bet, average bet size, it’s actually quite similar if you look at sort of the averages. But there is certainly some variation state to state. Some of it is dependent on which types of products and games are more popular. In Michigan, for example, we saw a much wider gap between the amounts of engagement in iGaming versus OSB versus some of the other states that have both of those products. There is also differences in what sports people bet. College betting is much more popular in West Virginia relative to professional. Still professional is more popular, but the relative gap is quite narrower than you see in certain other states like New Jersey. So it’s definitely variable state to state. But if you kind of look at the averages, it’s quite similar to New Jersey.

Stephen Grambling

Analyst

That’s helpful. And perhaps as a follow up, you referenced some of the things you’re doing on the content side with Bleacher. More, I guess, broadly would you generally -- how do you evaluate potentially advertising on the app or monetizing user data another way?

Jason Robins

Analyst

We do take advertising on free to play games. We are not doing that for pay to play games. We think that if you’re paying for a product, you should not have to see ads and we feel more comfortable doing it on free to play games. There is some Web site advertising on the DFS products with the one exception, but the vast majority of it is in free to play games. So that’s the sort of approach that we’ve taken. And right now we are actually turning down ad dollars. We have less inventory between our free to play games and the content that we’re producing than we have demand for advertising. So one of the things we are looking to do is to figure out ways to expand our content footprint and have both more inventory to take ad dollars but also content is a very effective way of acquiring and engaging and monetizing our user base as well. So one of the nice things about it is it has that great synergy as you can make money on the advertising side, but you can also make money by using content to acquire players and activate players and introduce new products and new forms of betting to them.

Stephen Grambling

Analyst

Makes sense. Thanks so much. I’ll jump back in the queue.

Jason Robins

Analyst

Thank you.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. And our next question comes from Shaun Kelley from Bank of America. Your line is now open.

Shaun Kelley

Analyst

Hi. Good morning, everyone. Thank you for taking my question. I just wanted to go back to the promotional allowances. When we kind of try and triangulate into this, it seems to us that there was a pretty big spread between some of the state reported GGR and what you guys ultimately reported in net revenues for the quarter. So I’m just curious. Did we see or did you see a meaningful sequential change in promotional allowances just -- and some of this may be reporting related, but between what you reported in Q3 and what you actually reported in Q4?

Jason Robins

Analyst

We definitely had a decline in promotional spend, largely driven by the new customer versus existing customer mix. So Q3 was a huge quarter for a customer acquisition for us with the start of NFL and with NBA, NHL completing their season and going into the Playoffs. So between those things, it was a really great time. There’s also a lot of pent-up demand for online sports betting, given that there is a real lack of traditional sports in Q2. So that certainly was a big factor, just the mix shift between new and existing customers shifting more towards existing customers in Q4, which as we said is going to have a natural downward impact on promotional rate. Also, you mentioned this too. There are definitely differences in state reporting around how promotional dollars are factored into or not factored into the taxable basis. And what we try to do internally is really work at the individual state level to be able to grow the state in a way that is both tax efficient and makes sense from a customer and data perspective in terms of the impact of the promotions we’re running. And sometimes the reporting does sort of -- it is a little bit hard to follow exactly what the promotional spend was from that.

Shaun Kelley

Analyst

Got it. That’s helpful. And then maybe like big picture, Jason, just longer term, if we’ve got some volatility and when you do have one of these quarters where you’ve got big new user acquisition or new state launches and then things kind of level out. Just over the long term, is there anything in the data or anything you’re seeing right now that would suggest there is any difference in sort of what your estimated long-term kind of promotional allowance would be? I think we see that number kind of tend to stabilize in like the mid 20s in Europe and some other markets, but just kind of – long term, is there any difference here really to the model, or is it, look, we’re just in a lot of volatility given where we are in our growth curve?

Jason Robins

Analyst

I think it’s definitely the latter. We’re going to talk more about this at our upcoming Investor Day in early March. But the punch line is we don’t see any difference in the long-term projection there from what we said in the past. There is going to be a lot of optimization, but by far the largest impact will come from just the natural mix shift from new customers to existing customers as business matures and the rates of promotional spending are most aggressive with the customers. We do, do promotions for existing customers, but they’re far more aggressive with new customers. And simply if we didn’t change a thing, you’d see a significant decline as the business matures. Now what will be interesting is new states will launch and then as we enter those new states and acquire customers, you’re going to see an increase at the state level, which, of course, depending on the quantum of states, in which states, and how big the population base is, it could create fluctuations. But if you just sort of look at it in an existing state as a unit -- at an existing state as a unit, that natural decline will occur simply from the statement sharing in the mix of new customers to existing customer shifting towards existing.

Shaun Kelley

Analyst

Very helpful. Thank you.

Jason Robins

Analyst

Thank you.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. And our final question comes from the line of Vasily Karasyov from Cannonball Research. Your line is now open.

Vasily Karasyov

Analyst

Thank you. Good morning. I wanted to ask you to sort of rank the customer acquisition channels in terms of cost, customer acquisition costs, so from like high to low or low to high. Just wanted to see how -- and also if you could comment on how different those costs are in each channels. That would be super helpful. Thank you. And what drives also the difference, the competitive action. I understand that the life cycle in a particular state is a driver, but also the rest of them would be helpful. Thank you.

Jason Robins

Analyst

Yes, a good question. We are pretty cautious about how we disclose anything around this, because as you can imagine, this is a real competitive area. Being able to optimize across a number of different marketing channels at scale is something we believe we’re really good at. We’re a very data driven company and we’ve been doing this a long time. So we have a lot of great historical data to rely on. So we’re a little cautious. I think what I can probably answer at a high level, and this will come as no surprise, is television is definitely typically the most expensive channel, but also the highest reach channel. And certainly from a creative standpoint, television ads can -- you can say a lot more in a 30 or 60 over even 15-second ad than you can in a display ad. We’ll typically try to max out digital first since that’s the most efficient and also the easiest to measure. And then to gain additional reach and scale, we go to television and other sorts of offline channels.

Vasily Karasyov

Analyst

Thank you very much.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. And that concludes our question-and-answer session for today. I’d like to turn the conference back over to Jason Robins for any closing remarks.

Jason Robins

Analyst

Thank you all for joining us on today’s call. We appreciate your insightful questions and look forward to continuing our conversations with you. 2020 was an outstanding year for DraftKings still with many impressive accomplishments. But we also recognized the suffering and challenges that many in our communities have experienced and continue to face. We’re excited for the future. DraftKings is well positioned with over $1.8 billion in cash to enter new states as soon as practicable, to drive our continued product innovation, acquire customers and explore opportunistic M&A. Matt, Paul, Jason and I are excited to share more insight and information with you at our Investor Day on March 9. We will explore our latest outlook on TAM, sources of competitive differentiation, unit economics and EBITDA at maturity. I hope all of you stay safe and well, and we look forward to speaking with you again soon.

Operator

Operator

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for participating in today’s conference. This does conclude the program and you may now disconnect.