The Number Cruncher

Founded in 2013, Eilers Research has become the go-to authority on emerging online gaming products thanks in large part to the work of Adam Krejcik, a partner at Eilers, and the man who heads up the firm’s digital and interactive division.

Krejcik’s initial focus with Eilers was almost exclusively social gaming, and his quarterly social casino tracker remains one of the top research notes in the industry. In early 2014 he found himself outside his social gaming comfort zone, a market he covered for several years as an analyst at California-based investment firms, and immersed in a new emerging industry that offered Eilers the chance to be a first mover and the foremost authority on the subject. 

As Krejcik explains, “There are these little kinds of segments within gaming that we thought were underfollowed by some of the bigger firms.” Krejcik’s work on one of those segments, daily fantasy sports, would thrust Eilers into the spotlight, and turn Krejcik, already an authority on social gaming, into one of the most high-valued voices in DFS.

Interestingly, the opportunity nearly passed him by.

“We really didn’t start looking at DFS until early 2014, and it was mainly inbound, as clients were calling us and saying, hey, what do you make of the daily fantasy sports stuff?” he says. “That’s what prompted me to do the white paper last year.”

As a boutique firm, Eilers was willing to explore DFS, whereas larger firms may have viewed DFS as a time and money sink—a prudent decision they are likely regretting.

“As an analyst we strive off data, the more you can give us the better,” Krejcik says. “When you have private companies or unregulated markets, there’s less to look at, so you have to start making comparisons to other industries, and you have to talk to the companies themselves, and do a bottom-up analysis.”

As Krejcik would explain, building these bottom-up models for an industry like DFS requires more work than the top-down analysis performed in established regulated markets like Nevada. The plus side is there are fewer people doing that work, and in the case of DFS, only Eilers which has built out a model.

And it’s a good thing they did, as DFS has gone from niche to front-page headlines since Krejcik’s white paper was first published. And while the ongoing DFS saga will keep Krejcik busy in 2016, don’t be surprised to see his name, or that of Eilers Research, pop up in yet another new emerging market.