Why Did FanDuel Cancel Its MLB ‘Dinger Tuesday’ Promotion?
Sarah Stier/Getty Images. Pictured: Aaron Judge
A popular and profitable FanDuel MLB promotion has been axed ahead of the start of the NFL calendar.
Dinger Tuesday won't return for the rest of the regular season, FanDuel spokesperson Kevin Hennessy told the Action Network.
There is a possibility the promotion returns in some form during the playoffs, Hennessy said, but it could have an entirely different structure and name.
Every Tuesday, users who bet $25 on a player to hit a home run received $5 back in free bets for every homer hit in the game — regardless of player. VIP users were given the option to bet $250 on a player to hit a home run and received $50 in free bets per homer.
The free bets were returned even if your player ended up jacking a dinger and winning you money.
Regular users had a max of $25 in free bets returned per game, while VIP users had a maximum of $250 in free bets.
The promotion was decidedly +EV, and the Action Network wrote about it weekly invariousforms because of its sturdy returns.
For each game wagered, you received roughly $7 in expected value. For VIP users, that number increased to $70 per game.
Effectively, regular users were expected to make $7 per game over the long-run.
For instance, one of our main contributors for this promotion made roughly $2,600 on Dinger Tuesday this season. The Promoguy made just under $1,000 on home run bets alone and returned $2,270 in free bets.
Assuming a reasonable 70% conversion on all those free bets, his overall profit was about $2,587.
And that was for the regular $25 per bet promotion. Had you bet that with a VIP account, the return would have been roughly $26,000 for 20 days of work.
Over 20 Dinger Tuesdays, that's an ROI of roughly 55% for every dollar wagered.
For reference's sake, the S&P 500 — the rough value of the entire American stock market — is up about 37% since this date in 2018.
But FanDuel isn't taking down this promo because it's valuable for smart bettors.
In reality, the sportsbook leveraged the fact that most users wouldn't 1.) use all their free bets to a 70% conversion rate and 2.) make profitable HR picks over the long run.
While FanDuel wouldn't divulge how much they made — if at all — from this promotion, the sportsbook was able to generate interest in other forms of bets because of Dinger Tuesday, namely Same Game Parlays.
But with September fast approaching, sportsbooks have shifted their focus toward NFL and college football betting, where books truly butter their bread.
Bringing in users every week with Dinger Tuesday — especially during the dogdays of summer — was paramount to keeping customers engaged.
Now, the calendar will do the work for them.
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