SPENCE ...Super Bowl ad missed the cut but still won.
Gutsy ad doesn’t fly with NFL, but is a hit with investors
In poker, as in business, as in life, you have to bet your hunches. No one knows that better than Mark Tadros, a 33-year-old veteran of the professional poker circuit who runs ProDraftLeague.com, a fantasy sports startup.
Late last year, Tadros and his newest investor group drew up a gutsy plan: to air a US$4.55 million commercial during Super Bowl XLIX.
That price tag is likely more than any Canadian company ever paid for a single ad — 14% more than the US$4 million BlackBerry paid to showcase BlackBerry 10 at Super Bowl 2013. But Pro Draft League needed the exposure: it’s the third-ranked competitor in what’s essentially a two-player market. To catch up with rivals FanDuel and DraftKings, Tadros needed a Hail Mary pass.
No one knows winning and losing like a poker player. A Montreal native with a degree in political science, Tadros played poker every day. He spent 2½ years on the North American pro circuit, a career that netted him about $55,000 a year after travel costs and tournament buy-ins. “I was just grinding through it,” he says. “I was never able to get the big wins.”
As PokerStars became a TV phenomenon, Tadros realized his pro career was drawing to a close. “I used to play with older gentlemen who just enjoyed the game,” he says. “Then we got a lot of new players coming to the tables, younger and more reckless. I didn’t love it any more.”
He got a job with ICC Compliance Centre, a transportation-safety organization. But when ICC transferred him to Vancouver to manage its B.C. office, Tadros began to get restless. He spent much of his spare time on Internet gaming sites, and decided to build a sports-betting business. But given the U.S. government’s 2006 crackdown on Internet gambling, it felt too risky. Then came a ruling that changed his mind.
It turns out betting on teams to win or lose a game is gambling, because the results depend on “chance.” But if you bet on the players to score points — as in a hockey or football pool — that’s considered a game of skill, as your predictions can be based on research and historical patterns.
Offering daily competitions — no more waiting a full season to win or lose the pool — in football, hockey, baseball and basketball, Pro Draft League now has 10,000 members, 15,000 of whom regularly play for money. Tadros says the average player spends US$1,400 a year on the site, which takes a cut of 10%, and pours the rest into prize money.
It wasn’t an easy startup. Tadros began by hiring coders to develop the algorithms that would assign each player a different draft value, based on their track records, recent injury stats and other inside data. “I put everything I had into the business,” he says. “I got so broke I was calling my dad to send me grocery money.” Nonetheless, the site launched in September 2013, in time for the new football season.
Tadros admits he made a rookie mistake: “I waited too long to raise money.” It was only last January that he started talking to potential investors. “I never suspected anyone would give me $200,000 for an idea,” he says.
He spent much of last year pitching investors in Vancouver, Vegas and Silicon Valley; one $500,000 deal fell through last minute. On Sept. 1, Tadros decided he would shut down the site the next day. Then he received a call from a Vancouver angel. “He saved the company, and introduced us to our next investors,” he says.
It was the second investment group that offered Pro Draft League a seven-figure investment — with more to come if Tadros could think of a way to vault the company into the big leagues. His California-based designer and social media director proposed running a Super Bowl commercial inviting football fans to bet on hockey and basketball.
The result was a striking 30-second spot featuring actors dressed as professional football players looking guiltily into the camera as subtitles recalled some of the scandals that frustrated fantasy players this season. “Deactivated for domestic violence.” “Suspended for substance abuse.” “Arrested for assault.” The taglines read: “Thank God Football Season is Ending. Time to play Fantasy Hockey.”
While the production values were weak, the message was strong — too strong. NBC officials said the NFL would never accept the spot. Tadros pulled it, then issued a press release promoting the “banned” commercial. In an online story posted Jan. 29,
Entertainment Weekly selected PDL’s ad as No. 2 on its list of the Super Bowl’s “32 greatest rejected commercials.
Tadros insists his investors had anted up a sizable reserve deposit, and were ready to pay the full tab to run the commercial.
While Pro Draft League missed the big spot, it also avoided the hefty buy-in — and may have funds available should another big opportunity arise. Meantime, after two rounds of financing, Tadros is planning to move the company into new sports, such as mixed martial arts, rugby and cricket.
In five months, Tadros went from nearly pulling the plug to facing down the NFL. How did he manage to pull that off and keep the lion’s share of equity in his company? “I had my poker face on the whole time,” he says.