For American sports fans, this time of year is the doldrums of the sports calendar. The professional hockey and basketball seasons just ended (college seasons ended a while ago), college football is two months away, and the NFL season is more than two months away. Right now, it’s just baseball, which is cool and all, but the middle of the baseball season just doesn’t excite. Last week, though, was the opening week of the Canadian Football League (CFL) and with it came a new alliance between the CFL and DraftKings.
Just in time for the opening kickoff, DraftKings launched CFL contests, the centerpiece of which was the CFL $50K Kickoff Special, featuring a $50,000 guaranteed prize pool, a $5,000 first prize, and payouts down to 435 spots. The usual types of games were all there, from 50/50’s to heads-up matches to smaller guaranteed prize pool contests. Scoring format is similar to what players should be used to from American football games with some slight adjustments for the differences between the NFL and CFL.
The CFL also announced that it has entered into an advertising and promotional agreement with DraftKings.
“We’re pleased to form an advertising and promotional partnership with DraftKings that will elevate both of our brands,” CFL Senior Vice President of Marketing and Content Christina Litz said in a press release. “This new fantasy offering will give avid CFL fans and sports fans new to our league an opportunity to deepen their engagement with our game. It’s an important part of our strategy to serve our existing fan base better than ever before at the same time we attract new fans, including the next generation of fans.”
The key here is the CFL using this relationship to attract new fans. While the National Football League has been popular for decades, its rise to the top of American professional sports and into the immortal beast that it is has a lot to do with sports betting and fantasy sports. Football is by far the most popular sport on which Americans wager – much of that has to do with the infrequency of games and a scoring system that lends itself perfectly to spread-based betting. It is this gambling, combined with season-long fantasy – and now daily fantasy – that has driven much of the popularity of the game. Betting and fantasy sports give non-fans something to pay attention to and fans of single teams (as most of us are) an interest in all of the games, even ones between two terrible teams.
With this partnership, the Canadian Football League is attempting to follow in the footsteps of the NFL, even if that footstep is much smaller and way behind. Most Americans know nothing about the CFL, except that it is a league populated by players who couldn’t make NFL teams. But if CFL contests can attract any sort of reasonable percentage of DraftKings players, the league could see an uptick in its viewership, traffic to the league website, and the like as fantasy players investigate CFL games more.