How DraftKings Manages Office Space Growth Leveraging Occupier

Last Updated on May 21, 2024 by Morgan Beard

Draftkings, founded in 2012, is a digital sports betting platform that allows users to participate in daily and weekly fantasy sports contests and bet on major American sports like MLB, NHL, NFL, NBA, PGA, as well as European Premier League, Canadian Football League, NASCAR, tennis, and martial arts.

In early 2018, Draftkings became Occupier’s first customer. As the Director of Global Real Estate at Draftkings, Mack Freedman recognized the need for a digital Lease Administration tool to track leases during their hypergrowth phase. Leases contain critical dates and clauses that impact a company’s bottom line.

From 2018 to 2024, Draftkings grew their employee base from 500 to 4,500 globally. Freedman states, “being in this hypergrowth situation, having something that would track my leases for me was incredibly important.”

Challenge: Strategically Planning for Lease Acquisitions & Growth

With multiple leases spanning across various locations, including Boston, Las Vegas, Bulgaria, and Ukraine, DraftKings faced the daunting task of seamlessly integrating their acquisitions while maintaining visibility and control over their expanding global portfolio. Critical dates, data information, and financial reporting needed to be meticulously managed to ensure compliance and efficient operations.

Moreover, as DraftKings continued to penetrate new markets, partnering with coworking space providers and short term leases became a strategic move. However, this approach also heightened the risk of missing crucial deadlines, such as renewal dates, which could potentially disrupt their regulatory compliance efforts, as evidenced by a missed mailing forward address renewal in London that Draftkings needed for regulatory purposes at a separate UK office. “As a real estate professional, “I have calendar reminders for critical events and a spreadsheet that tracks everything, but having something more interactive was something I was looking for, especially being a small, nimble, real estate team” says Freedman.

Solution: A Tool for Lease Data and Critical Dates Truth

Occupier’s Lease Administration module served as the backbone for managing DraftKings’ growing real estate lease portfolio. According to Mack Freedman, Director of Global Real Estate at DraftKings, “Occupier has really helped the integration process taking us from this early-stage Boston based company to a true global portfolio, in which we now have multiple hundred thousand square foot leases in Boston, Vegas, Bulgaria, and Ukraine.” The Lease Administration module streamlined the visibility of their evolving portfolio, including critical dates, data information, and financial reporting, ensuring a smooth integration process during their rapid growth phase.

Benefits of Occupier:

According to Freedman, “Occupier is useful for tenants with a large or complicated lease portfolio. Their software helps you organize and manage your portfolio efficiently. If I’ve learned anything in commercial real estate, it’s that there is no reason to accept that one way of doing something is the best way, and it’s great to see technology disrupting and optimizing the way we work.” 

• Automated Critical Date Tracking: Ensured critical dates were tracked, preventing missed renewal deadlines.
• Centralized Lease Database: Occupier houses all lease information in one place, enabling easy analysis and visibility for the entire team.
• Financial Reporting Capabilities: Occupier enabled accurate forecasting of rent obligations and in-depth analysis of payments across DraftKings’ entire portfolio.
• Rent & Additional Expense Visibility: The platform provided clear visibility into base rent, percentage rent, CAM charges, and tenant improvement allowances.
• Real estate & Finance Team Collaboration: Occupier facilitated collaboration between DraftKings’ real estate and finance teams for opex planning, quarterly reporting, and aligning on fiscal numbers.

Occupier is a place to house all your lease information and digest it.The ability to digest and analyze data with a few clicks as opposed to flipping through a word document is so valuable to our business. In addition, “myself and my entire team have visibility into all leases and all critical information in one single place.”