Hall of Fame NFL quarterback Joe Montana has joined the Fan Controlled Football League (FCFL) as an investor. He will also serve as Chief Strategic Advisor to the league. Montana is an angel investor and founder of the venture capital firm Liquid 2 Ventures.
The inaugural FCFL season will kick off in May 2019 and will feature eight teams. As its name suggests, the league gives fans power over the teams, using the blockchain-powered FAN Token platform and the FCFL mobile app to coordinate decision making.
“I’m tremendously excited to be partnering with the FCFL,” Montana said in an FCFL press release. “What this team has created is innovative, engaging, and will energize the digital age football fan. Fans will hire the coaches, draft the players and call all the plays in real time. It’s a real-life video game and the future of sports.”
A fan-run player draft will be held to allow fans to build team rosters. Fans will also select the team names and logos. Similar to video games like Madden, fans will call plays in real-time by voting on the FCFL app. The outcome of each fan vote will be relayed to the quarterback and hopefully executed on the field.
As part of a multi-year streaming broadcasting partnership with Twitch, fans will also be able to call plays through the Twitch app itself while watching the game. The FCFL is the first professional sports league built on top of the Twitch platform.
SportTechie Takeaway
The FCFL already has an impressive list of advisors, including Steven Adler, who is the former director of mobile technology at the NFL, and Ariel Horn, who is currently the global head of esports content at Riot Games.
Montana, who won four Super Bowls with the San Francisco 49ers, isn’t the only key member of staff with significant ties to the Bay Area. The league’s COO, Andy Dolich, held stints as an executive with the Oakland Athletics and Golden State Warriors during the 1980s and 1990s, and served as the 49ers’ COO from 2007-2010.