The New Hampshire Lottery’s new commercial is a not-so-subtle dig at daily fantasy sports
They held nothing back.
Boston-based daily fantasy sports company DraftKings and its DFS counterpart FanDuel have long insisted their contests are games of skill, not games of chance, saturating airwaves with ads featuring regular people winning big money on their sites. Now, the New Hampshire Lottery is following John Oliver and Seth Rogen’s lead by mocking FanDuel and DraftKings in their newest commercial.
The NH Lottery’s advert mimics the look and feel of FanDuel’s commercials in every way, from the color scheme to the “real people’’ sharing their success stories.
“I won $500 playing the lottery last week, and I also saw my family on a Sunday for the first time in months,’’ says one of the actors.
“I spent so much time looking at football stats, my wife threatened to divorce me,’’ another says. “That’s when I decided to start playing the lottery instead.’’
“I also divorced my wife,’’ he continues. “I never had a wife. I don’t know why I said that.’’
With the hype of last week’s $1.5 billion Powerball drawing fresh in our minds and FanDuel laying employees off on the heels of yet another state attorney general calling the legality of daily fantasy sports into question, the NH Lottery’s ad almost feels like kicking a man while he’s down.
Even the tagline of the ad is a dig at DFS: “Turning fantasies into reality since 1964.’’ Of course, daily fantasy sites can turn fantasies into reality as well. But it helps if you previously worked in data science and developed your own proprietary algorithm so you can play DFS for a living.
Watch the full video below.
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