What’s that, Neil Patrick Harris? You wanna sing about DraftKings’ Golden Nugget Online Casino in a funny fishing scenario? Well then, hit it!

“He’s fishing for some tuna, 
Playing Live Dealer while he waits
He hasn’t had a nibble,
But he caught a pair of eights.
It’s like he’s sitting at the tables, 
While he’s on the high seas.
Golden Nugget Online Casino, 
Can we get some face cards please?”

There’s another spot, too? Set in a pet grooming salon? OK … a one, and a two, and…

“You’re waiting for your doggie, 
Playing slots, blackjack and more.
How ’bout a Jackpot baby?!
It’s all the fun of the casino floor.
Golden Nugget Online Casino, 
Always a crowd pleaser.
So live it up while you wait, 
For that golden retriever!”

Yeah, gambling’s everywhere these days. Anytime anyone wants it. For better or worse, that’s exactly where we are.

“It was important that the creative was authentic to the brand’s look and feel, while adding an extra layer of entertainment that we believe will resonate with our customers,” DraftKings VP, marketing Veronica Hamel tells Muse. “The spots play up to the tagline, ‘Make Any Moment Golden,’ which celebrates our players turning their everyday downtime such as fishing or going to the dog groomers into a golden experience.”

Why was casting Broadway and How I Met Your Mother icon NPH a smart bet?

“We had our sights set on working with someone who would bring energy, fun and entertainment, as well as resonate with our players,” Hamel says. “Neil Patrick Harris rose to the top on both accounts.”

“He has a great presence both on screen and on stage. He was terrific throughout the process. From our first meeting you could tell he was invested in the project and he delivered on a great performance.”

Seems like he’d be a fun dude to film with. True?

“The environment on set was great—there certainly were a lot of laughs, especially during the dog groomer spot,” she says.

“Neil had great chemistry—and patience!—with the dogs. We learned that Neil himself has a golden retriever. And between takes, he took a selfie with the commercial’s sweet golden retriever, George, to send to his partner and kids.”

Aw, Neil came up aces.

Helmed by Caviar director Jason Woliner (who helmed Borat Subsequent Moviefilm), the work breaks today across TV and online platforms.

Daft rant! Kevin could read a shoe size and kill. Though he looks more like the fifth Beatle than Jimmy. (And that’s a neat cameo from Johnson at the end.)

For the Super Bowl, all three major gambling brands put their ad games in motion.

DK’s :30 drops today and will run in the SB pregame show.

FanDuel plans to air Rob Gronkowski’s 25-yard field-goal attempt right before the coin toss, with a halftime commercial to follow.

And BetMGM is banking on in-game star power, casting Tom Brady, Wayne Gretzky and Vince Vaughn in a silly :60.

Jeff Scardino is a freelance creative director with over a decade of experience running projects, teams and accounts. His professional work has been recognized by every award show, and his personal projects have been featured by media outlets worldwide. His sports marketing work has included campaigns for DraftKings, Buffalo Wild Wings and Invesco.

We spoke to Jeff for our Time-Out series, where we chat with folks in the sports world about their favorite athletes, teams, sports movies and shows, and their love of sports generally.

Jeff, tell us…

Where you grew up, and where you live now.

I grew up in northeast Ohio, a small town called Ashtabula. Same hometown as Urban Meyer, actually, which used to be a lot cooler to tell people. I just moved to Atlanta from NYC, where I lived for almost 12 years. Would still be there if Covid didn’t hit. My wife was pregnant with our second child, and we didn’t know what would become of the city. There were rumors that the tunnels and bridges were going to be closed like in a Batman movie. So we left and moved south to where we met in portfolio school. And now, I fight the urge to say “y’all.”

Your earliest sports memory. 

I’ll never forget my unassuming little old grandma would always get kicked out of Little League baseball games for yelling at the umps. She would bring this green and white fold-up chair and sit right behind home plate. Any call she didn’t agree with, she let the poor guy have it. And then after getting kicked out, she would park her car next to the outfield fence and continue to yell from her car window. Legend.

Your favorite sports teams.

I still stay loyal to my Cleveland teams: the Browns, the Guardians and the Cavs—even though I’m a big basketball fan in general. And when you get married you inherit teams whether you want to or not, so I’m legally obligated to root for the New Orleans Saints and the Georgia Bulldogs.

Your favorite athlete.

Being from outside of Cleveland, I have to say LeBron James for bringing us a championship and breaking the curse. Also Kyrie Irving, who’s making it kind of hard to be his fan of late, but after that NBA Finals performance, he can do no wrong.

I’ve shot with a lot of athletes over the years, even some Hall of Famers. Out of them, I really like Stefan Diggs of the Buffalo Bills. He’s just real and even more sarcastic than me, so I’m a fan.

Growing up I was a huge Kenny Lofton fan from the great ’90s Cleveland Indians teams. Probably because he was the living embodiment of Willie Mays Hayes. I used to wear a loose gold chain while I played baseball because of him, which became problematic. 

Your favorite sports show or podcast.

Before kids, I didn’t go a day without watching PTI (Pardon the Interruption). I still record every episode in case I don’t fall asleep on the couch at 8 o’clock. I would love to sit with Tony and Mike and watch them bicker in person.

Right now though, I’m enjoying the “new media,” as Draymond Green labeled it. There are some great podcasts that former players have created like All the Smoke, I Am Athlete, The Pivot, and The Old Man and the Three. They all bring such a different, unfiltered look at athletes and sports in general.

Your favorite sports movie.

Major League. They should have let Wild Thing throw out the first pitch of the 2016 World Series in Cleveland and maybe we would have beat the Cubs.

Varsity Blues. Whipped cream sales must have skyrocketed after this dropped.

From a pure cinematic and storytelling perspective, I loved I, Tonya. We had the director Craig Gillespie treat on some Buffalo Wild Wings commercials, and I always wondered how they would have turned out if we had ended up going with him. 

A recent project you’re proud of.

As a freelancer, seeing a project through production is rare, unfortunately. But I was granted the opportunity to do that with the latest work for DraftKings. We helped them launch a new innovative fantasy football game called Reignmakers, using Kevin Hart and a few NFL stars. I’m proud of it because of how quickly we turned it around, something you would never know by the finished product. The brief came in right before the Fourth of July holiday. We were shooting by the end of July, and the work was on air in August. The plane was being built as we were flying, to use a really lame industry saying.

Someone else’s project that you admired recently. 

As soon as I saw the DojoCode music video, I knew it was going to win every award. It has every element: the trendy cause of female empowerment, the innovation of an interactive music video, and a culturally relevant ambassador with popular artist Doja Cat. I’m also just a big fan of Mojo Supermarket. Love working with them.

What sports can do that nothing else can. 

I guess I’m supposed to say “sports bring people together,” but that doesn’t ring true as much after it was weaponized politically for division with Colin Kaepernick and more recently with trans athletes. I’m going to give a more cynical answer and just say sports can take your mind off anything. They have a way of drawing you in and transporting you to a place where you’re only focused on coaching from your couch.

What you’d be doing if you weren’t in the sports world.

Entrepreneur. Over the years, I’ve come up with ideas for clients that made me think, “This could be a business.” And I’ve actually started a few business plans from them. So I just need to summon the nerve to jump ship, clear out my kids’ college funds, and get one of them off the ground.

In a freaky, futuristic video created with DraftKings for his latest single, Harlem rapper Dave East labors in a lab with mutants and aliens to build a bionic hoops player.

Streetball legend “The Professor,” aka Grayson Scott Boucher, takes a starring role in “Bet It,” as East ignites a slow-burn groove, tracing his rise and name-dropping DK.

“Bet It” marks the final installment in a three-part hip-hop series from VaynerMedia designed to broaden DK’s appeal among music and sports fans. Roundball plays into each clip, a reminder of DraftKings’ status as the official betting partner of the NBA.

“At a time when consumer attention spans are increasingly fleeting, we wanted to explore fresh ways beyond standard advertising to authentically connect our brand with audiences,” Stephanie Sherman, DK’s CMO, tells Muse.

“Embedding DraftKings within original music gave us the chance to prioritize quality content and entertainment,” she says. “Doing so creates organic opportunities for the songs to gain traction, as we saw with Fresco Trey’s ‘DraftKings’ track that was added to the NBA 2K22 song catalog.”

“Being able to collaborate with DraftKings is one of the highlights of my early music career,” says Trey. “It was awesome to be able to shoot such a high-budget/high-value video in my hometown of Memphis. My entire family came out to the shoot, and the atmosphere that day was electric.”

He adds: “Before I made the track, [VaynerMedia execs] Mike Boyd, Gary Vaynerchuk and I had a quick Zoom call to discuss ideas. Once I got in the studio, I just decided to have fun with it. That chill process produced some fun vibes.”

In the song, he boasts:

“Draft King” by Polo Perks kicked off the series last fall:

At one point, he brags: “I get lots of guap … this shit be everlasting … All this guap on me, that’s why my denim saggin’.”

Sounds like DraftKings paid off for Polo. Still, detractors worry that some who wager could wind up with empty pockets. Their concern grows as legal sports gambling drives deeper into the mainstream through advertising that seeks to expand its market.

All told, the three clips have generated more than 10 million combined views, mainly on YouTube and TikTok, with numbers boosted by sharing across the artists’ platforms and channels.

Other DK efforts in a similar vein—mining pop culture, though sans music—include its NFL push with Martin Lawrence and Jerry Rice. Last summer, the brand ran jokey extreme-sports ads during regional breaks in NBC’s coverage of the Tokyo Olympics.

CREDITS

Mike Boyd: Head of Artist Relations & Music Strategy
Kyle Arango: Group Creative Director
Joseph Leotta: Vice President, Group Account Director
Maya Brewster: Executive Producer
Mat Holis: Executive Producer: 
Laura Shea: Executive Producer
Lil Polo Tee: Artist
Reel Goats: Director
Matt Kalish: President, DraftKings N.A. and Co-Founder
Stephanie Sherman: Chief Marketing Officer, DraftKings
Michael Shonkoff: VP, Brand, DraftKings
Andrew Schiel: Senior Brand Marketing Manager, DraftKings

It’s wet! It’s wacky! It’s buckets of fun!

Legendary wide receiver Jerry Rice grabs a big-ass cooler and helps a DraftKings winner celebrate—NFL sidelines style!—in the sports betting brand’s new commercial timed to the playoffs:

Nice PJs in the bedroom scene, Jerry! That’s actor Marlon Daniel Cowart getting drenched—repeatedly. Maybe he shouldn’t let Rice hang out around his house anymore.

“Everyone had a good time—from the director to the crew to the DraftKings team,” Rice recalls. “It’s not every day I get to dump a cooler on someone 20 times!”

“He had never dumped a cooler during his entire career. So, this was a first for him, and he was very excited,” says DraftKings VP of brand and sports marketing Michael Shonkoff.

Instead of Gatorade, Rice showered Cowart with water and orange food coloring—the same hue as the crown in DraftKings’ logo.

“On set, we were all pretty nervous,” Shonkoff says. “It’s not easy to just grab another take when you’re dumping liquid into someone’s bed. But Jerry was perfect the entire day. Each cooler dump was done in one take.”

Developed in-house with production company Sweet Rickey and director Max Gutierrez, the :30 breaks today across local TV. National broadcast begins this weekend during NFL wild-card coverage.

Of sports betting’s surge in popularity—DraftKings reported a 60 percent revenue surge for its most recent quarter—Rice says: “It has exploded. Now, you have the leagues, teams and major networks embracing it, because there’s a lot of money to be made. It’s only going to get bigger with the state of sports and technology.”

The spot follows drier but equally zany efforts with comedian Martin Lawrence and former NBA star Paul Pierce. The brand also dabbled in extreme sports humor last summer.

“Working with athletes, including some of the all-time greats, has always been a part of our strategy,” Shonkoff says. “It’s a great way to connect with fans and break through during competitive moments on the sports calendar.”

CREDITS

Draftkings

Stephanie Sherman – SVP, Channel Marketing
Josh Levin-Scherz – Sr. Director, Growth Marketing
Ethan Shibutani – Sr. Manager, Growth Marketing
Lindsey Guptill – Manager, Growth Marketing
Quinn Kane – Growth Marketing Coordinator
Russell Tanguay – Associate General Counsel
Raleigh Anne Gray – Director, Business Development
Bear Duker – Director, Influencer & Talent Partnerships
Kyle Beaudouin – Senior Manager, Influencer & Talent Partnerships
Michael Shonkoff – VP Brand & Sports Marketing
Steve Baker – Creative Director
Matt Zaifert – Associate Creative Director
Sam Johnson – Sr. Art Director
Sarah Juselius – Sr. Director of Creative Operations
Carly O’Hare – Sr. Project Manager
Mary D Hanifin – Executive Producer
Jake Williams – Producer
Meghan Gildart Nappi – Business Affairs
Tom Rigia – Director Production
Liz Kavanaugh – Program Manager
Jason Brennan – Sr Video Editor

Production
Sweet Rickey
Max Gutierrez – Director
Vanessa Longborn – Executive Producer
Scott Burtnett – Executive Producer

Audio
HiFi Project
Jack Bradley – Partner/Executive Producer
Patrick Navarre – Sound Engineer

Always a safe bet for broad humor, Martin Lawrence quarterbacks a fresh flight of NFL-themed ads from DraftKings. They take place inside a bettor’s brain, as the comedian and Bad Boys star struggles to mediate conflicting “feels” about which teams and players to pick.

Confidence, indecision, logic and “chill”—personified by a quartet of comic actors—clash on a set that looks like a game show crossed with mission control. We’d wager that DraftKings’ Sportsbook app helps them sort things out in the end:

Shot sitcom-style by Caviar L.A. director Jason Woliner, the work follows DraftKings’ recent comedy outing with daredevil athletes that ran on the Olympics. These new spots sport similar silliness. Lawrence mugs and quips for all he’s worth, backed by manic performances from Kristen Schaal (as “Confidence”), Christopher Mintz-Plasse (“Indecision”), Timothy Simons (“Logic”) and Dascha Polanco (“Chill”).

“We wanted to create this space where we get to follow a customer’s roller-coaster ride of thoughts and feelings and show how crazy, fantastical and humorously bizarre things can get at times,” says Michael Shonkoff, VP of brand at DraftKings, the official sports betting partner of the NFL. “You may be struggling to make a choice—then boom! you’re overconfident. Then back to indecision. Then chill and mellow. Then back to going with your gut.”

“Feels” conveys that vibe, even if some of the jokes are a tad hard to catch. Lawrence appears in 10 spots all told, which began breaking last week across ESPN, YouTube, the NFL Network and other platforms, with social support on Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, Twitter, TikTok and Reddit. 

It arrives as DraftKings drives into new territory. The Boston-based company just acquired Golden Nugget Online Gaming for $1.6 billion and also launched a marketplace with NFTs and other collectibles from icons like Tom Brady, Tiger Woods, Naomi Osaka and Wayne Gretzky.

CREDITS

Agency
DraftKings
Paul Renner, Creative Director
Mark St. Amant, Creative Director
Steve Baker, Creative Director
Todd Buckholt, Sr. Copywriter
Dan Winske, Lead.Art Director
Michael Shonkoff, VP Agency & Brand Strategy
Andrew Schiel, Sr. Manager, Consumer Product Marketing
Sarah Juselius, Sr. Dir. Creative Operations
Brittany Allen, Manager, Program Management
Meghan Nappi, Business Affairs Manager
Mary D. Hanifin, Executive Producer/Producer

Production
Caviar LA, LLC
Jason Woliner, Director
Michael Sagol, Executive Producer
Kim Dellara, Executive Producer
Casey Wooden, Head of Production
Tova Dann, Producer

Editorial
PS260
JJ Lask, Editor
Chris Nicastro, Assistant Editor
Erica Verga, Assistant Editor 
Raná Martin, Executive Producer
Zarina Mak, Managing Partner

VFX/Finishing
Jamm Visual
Adam Scott, Colorist
Carver Moore, Color Assistant
Anna Dood, Color Producer
Toma Bowen, VFX Supervisor
Tim Robbins, Lead Flame Artist
Ryland Bowen-Johnson, Flame Artist
Eric Weinschenk, Nuke Artist
Adrien Servadio, Flame Artist
Patrick Munoz, Flame Artist
Mike Wigart, VFX Producer
Alexandra Rickards, Production Coordinator
Asher Edwards, Executive Producer

Sound Design/Music
duotone audio group
Peter Nashel, Creative Director/Founder
Ross Hopman, Executive Producer
Gio Lobato, Sound Designer

Audio 
PS260 Audio
Nicole Pettigrew, Audio Engineer

Talent Procurement
160over90
Rachel Goldman, Sr. Director
Kelsey Gray Sherman, Director
Mike Lewinsky, SVP

“Life can sometimes get pretty boring,” big-wave surfer Bianca Valenti tells viewers as she rides a raging wall of water in an amusing spot for sports betting brand DraftKings.

Luckily, Valenti brought along her phone, so she can place some sports bets with the company’s app while balancing on that board.

In a second spot, rock climber Matty Hong finds scaling massive sandstone slabs “a little dull”—until DraftKings lifts his spirits.

“Life’s more fun with skin in the game,” we’re told in the cheeky spots, created in-house in partnership with Film 47 director Peter Berg (Friday Night Lights, Patriots Day). The work will run regionally on NBC affiliates during coverage of the Tokyo Olympics.

“Obviously, it’s all tongue-in-cheek. We certainly don’t recommend anyone rock climb or surf while using DraftKings’ apps,” Nick Devine, senior art director at DraftKings, tells Muse. “But we felt it would be strategically humorous and totally unexpected to show these uber-extreme athletes needing the thrills, chills and extra excitement of DraftKings—to ‘save’ their lives from being as boring as all of ours.”

Surfing and “sport climbing” are among four events debuting at the Games. We’ve already seen several campaigns about skateboarding, which the Olympics also added this year. Valenti and Hong aren’t competing in Tokyo, but they’re highly likable in the commercials, striking the perfect balance between goofy and rad.

“We call our target audience ‘skin-in-the-game fans,’ ” says Michael Shonkoff, VP and of brand and sports marketing at DraftKings. “They are people who love to compete, they’re comfortable with a bit of risk, and look for things in life that give them the thrill that comes with having something on the line. We wanted to develop a campaign appealing to their passion for sports and their overall attitude towards life.”

Below, Shonkoff dishes on shooting the films:

Bianca Valenti’s ‘Curl’

“We build a massive outdoor blue screen set in a parking lot and rigged Bianca’s surfboard to a gimbal arm to simulate the motion of a big-wave ride,” says Shonkoff. “Bianca spent the day being sprayed in the face with water and having to shout her lines over the sound of our large fan to simulate riding. We had our amazing VFX team, Carbon, on set to make sure they could build the wave around her in post. We matched that up to existing footage from multiple sources filmed from boats and jet skis out at Mavericks [the popular Northern California surfing spot]. One special clip was from Grant Thompson, a filmmaker who captures footage by actually swimming next to the surfers.”

“Her memory for the script was astounding, a steel trap—in unusual circumstances, no less. She had to balance on her board/gimbal, and pretend to surf like the pro she is, with a crazy wind machine and water spraying in her face, and Peter Berg yelling direction over the chaos to her. And I think she flubbed maybe two lines the entire time. She nailed everything for like eight hours straight. Proof of a top pro surfer’s almost supernatural concentration powers.”

Matty Hong’s ‘Climb’

Berg shot at Malibu Creek State Park, where “we were able to match that rock with epic drone footage of Matty climbing in Colorado and Chile,” Shonkoff says. “He spent a full day hanging off that rock face about 20 feet up, delivering his lines.”

“Matty’s fingers were shredded and bleeding by the end of his shoot day because he was hanging on the wall so long. But he was like, ‘Oh, huh, didn’t even notice.’ Just another day at the office. Also, his girlfriend, Margo Hayes, who came with him, is a very famous female climber in her own right, and hikers and other climbers who happened to be nearby immediately noticed Margo and were getting selfies with her, etc. It’s an incredibly insular extreme sport community, and she’s one of the biggest young stars, like Matty.”

CREDITS

Agency
DraftKings
Paul Renner, Creative Director
Mark St. Amant, Creative Director
Steve Baker, Creative Director
Michael Ackerson, Sr. Copywriter
Nick Devine, Sr. Art Director
Michael Shonkoff, VP Agency & Brand Strategy
Mary D. Hanifin, Executive Producer

Production
Film47
Peter Berg, Director
Vic Palumbo, President
Helga Gruber, Executive Producer

Editorial
Whitehouse Post
Charlie Harvey, Editor
Caitlin Grady, Executive Producer
Joe Carguti, Assistant Editor
Tara O’Sullivan, Assistant Editor
Taylor Schwartz, Assistant Editor

VFX/Finishing
Carbon
Matt McManus, Executive Producer
Vanessa Yee, Producer
John Price, VFX Sup/Creative Lead
Ryan Hussain, CG Supervisor/FX Artist
Jim Gomez, Flame Artist
Mark Youngren, Flame Artist
Tobey Lindback, Nuke Artist
Carlos Nieto, Matte Painter
Dan Moreno, FX Artist
Jeff Altman, Colorist

Music
duotone audio group
Peter Nashel, Creative Director/Founder
Ross Hopman, Executive Producer
Gio Lobato, Producer

Audio
Coupe Studios
Aaron Lasko, Executive Producer
Aaron Garrison, Producer/Engineer
Alex Hawley, Engineer