Return to site

A New Way to Play Fantasy Sports

· Sports Business,Sports,Sports Technology,NFL,Football

A New Way to Play Fantasy Sports

The Crown League is transforming fantasy football into an e-sports like competition, allowing fans to participate in "investment gaming." Unlike the typical fantasy football league, the user will serve as a part owner of the franchise instead of as a general manager. A professional general manager, along with an entire front office, will be hired to manage rosters and perform day to day operations, and the owners will choose how they want to manage operations.

These owners have the option of voting on draft selections, lineup decisions, waiver transactions, and trade proposals to build a reputation and potentially move into front office positions. They can also take a passive role and evaluate the decisions of their hired executives. The Crown League will be comprised of twelve different franchises based in cities throughout the US, and voting for the last location is currently underway on the website.

Mat Sposta, Dan Nissanoff, and Derek Siskin came up with the idea after the trio participated in a high stakes fantasy league. They recognized the potential of their idea as well as the many deficiencies and limitations of the current model. The League found that the feeling of winning was fleeting, and they wanted to create something that immersed the participants in more than just the competition. The most significant piece they wanted to incorporate into their model was the connectivity between individual players since currently, fantasy football is a fragmented space that can only connect a handful of competitors. After seeing the growing e-sports movement and the way it united millions of video gamers, they realized they could use this model to create franchises centered around cities that would piece together the fantasy sports community.

The Crown League aims to become a hybrid between e-sports and sports gambling, but the founders emphasize that this is an investment platform, not a gambling platform. The ownership of a professional franchise is currently only affordable to a handful of billionaires; the Crown League will provide all participants with the experience of virtually-owning a professional sports team. The founders believe that the democratization of owning a professional organization is something that is going to unite a large group of individuals and for the first time, it allows fans to watch games through a new lens.

While the founders' initial focus for the League is on the NFL, they aspire to expand globally into sports like soccer and cricket as well. Right now, their main goal is to establish their football league and use the experience garnered to refine their technology and template. Then they will overlay this template to across each sport, so fans of all sports worldwide can take part in The Crown League. This League will use a mobile application to provide its users with relevant information, content, analysis, and conversation - a service that does not exist in fantasy today. This concept illustrates the overarching aim of the Crown League: to provide connections and a distinctive ownership experience that will ultimately add a new layer to fantasy sports.

Written by Derek Chiang, Edited by James Mueller & Alexander Fleiss