Investors believe that a diverse board — in terms of relevant skills, gender, and race/ethnicity — is an indicator of a well-functioning board. Among other benefits, diverse boards can better manage risk by avoiding groupthink. DKNG’s Board sets the tone from the top, and the disclosure of a Board Matrix would signal to your employees, customers, suppliers, and investors that the directors themselves value diversity and inclusion in the boardroom.
Many institutional investors prioritize board diversity in their proxy voting guidelines and engagement initiatives. Significant time and resources must be spent by investors to ascertain director information from ambiguous, aggregate company disclosures or they must rely on data providers, which also draws from the same, imprecise sources. Even when photographs are provided, investors and data providers may be unable to appropriately determine the race or ethnicity of directors. As a result, it can be unnecessarily challenging for investors to fulfill their fiduciary duties and vote according to their own proxy voting guidelines — for example, to analyze the self-identified race/ethnicity of the chair of a particular committee.
Moreover, in its 2024 proxy statement, DKNG provides little decision-useful data with respect to how its directors’ individual qualifications fit together to effectively fulfill the Board’s oversight responsibilities, nor is any director’s self-identified race/ethnicity disclosed.
A Board Matrix would enable investors to make better informed proxy voting decisions by providing them with consistent, comparable and accurate data concerning the Board in a structured and decision-useful format. Such information would enable investors to: (1) assess how well-suited individual director nominees are for DKNG in light of its long-term business strategy and risks, including the overall mix of director attributes and skills; (2) identify any gaps in skills or attributes; and (3) make meaningful, year-over-year comparisons of the Board’s composition; and (4) ascertain the self-identified gender, race/ethnicity, skills and attributes of any particular director who has assumed leadership roles on the board/committees, as well as his/her/their tenure. We would also encourage companies to disclose, in aggregate, the number of any self-identified LGBTQ+ director(s).
The proposal neither prevents nor discourages DKNG from disclosing any other information that the Board believes is relevant.
DKNG’s own disclosed peer, such as Churchill Downs Incorporated, have published a Board Matrix with individualized director data. This uses EEO-1 categories for disclosing the diversity of individual directors, which allows for consistent and comparable data.
Please vote FOR this proposal. Recognizing DKNG’s ownership structure, we press the Board to review the unaffiliated votes cast in support.