Financializing Culture and Collectibles with Matt Kalish

Matt Kalish is President of DraftKings North America. DraftKings is a platform that offers daily fantasy sports, sports betting, and gambling products. Users can access the products via the firm’s website as well as by downloading its mobile app. Users can play and bet games in a variety of sports and leagues, including the NBA, NFL, MLB, NHL, or soccer leagues like the Premier League. Matt co-founded DraftKings in 2012 and is accountable for all North America revenue, bringing together all marketing, operations, and related analytics functions. Matt unifies leadership for all marketing functions as well as related analytics teams. He has acted as Chief Revenue Officer before transitioning into his role as President, DraftKings North America. Matt is a lifelong fan of fantasy sports, sports betting, and strategy games, combining his experience in corporate analytics and e-commerce to become the “game master” of DraftKings.  Due to Kalish’s foresight and guidance preparing for the overturn of PASPA, DraftKings Sportsbook was the first legal, online, and mobile sports betting platform in New Jersey – the first state outside of Nevada to legalize sports betting. Kalish has been named to SBJ’s class of 2019 “Forty Under 40” for all of his excellence and innovation. In our conversation, we discuss NFTs and digital collectibles, the dawn of the digital cultural renaissance, DraftKings and Entrepreneurship, sports, and pop culture. We begin our conversation by discussing the NFTs and community building. Matt does an excellent job at detailing how NFTs are pushing the evolution of digital identities forward. We also discuss the importance of community within Web3. Our conversations transitions to how Matt and his co-founders built DraftKings into one of largest sports media and gambling franchises. We dive deep into the importance of missionary founders to the long-term growth of a company and Matt gives excellent advice about some of his best practices for operating and leading an organization. Our discussion pivots fr