A spring football league launching in 2019, which will be aired on CBS and streamed for free through a mobile app, will automatically integrate a fantasy experience that fans can interact with on a play-by-play basis for a chance to win prizes.
The league, which is being manufactured by the Alliance of American Football, will allow fans to bet on play outcomes through a soon-to-launch Alliance App.
“Who do you like better Odell Beckham or Josh Norman head-to-head on this play? Is Brady going to out throw his opponent? You’re going to be able to do it while you’re watching the game,” league cofounder Charlie Ebersol said at a press conference. “We all know what regular fantasy is: you pick your team at the beginning of the season and you ride it out for the year. You know what daily fantasy is: you pick your team and sometime during the week you lock it in and then you ride that out for the whole week. But nobody watches sports that way: nobody chooses on Wednesday what they’re going to be rooting for in the fourth quarter on Sunday. That doesn’t make any sense.”
The league did not expand on how the fantasy component of the app will operate and what kinds of rewards participants will be able to win. But Ebersol said this will be the first professional sports league in history to have “fully-integrated in-game fantasy.”
“By building a direct-to-consumer, a direct-to-fan, platform where you can engage, the fan becomes the power broker. They determine whether the league is a success or a failure,” he said. “We believe integrated fantasy will revolutionize the way you watch sports.”
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Answering a SportTechie question about how player stats will be integrated into the fantasy experience as Zebra chips and Next-Gen Stats are integrated into the NFL, Ebersol said fans can expect a certain level of statistics to be integrated into the platform.
“The league is the aggregator for all information,” he said. “It’s a completely different level because it’s integrated into the platform. As a fan, you’re interacting directly with the league.”
The league, which will feature eight teams playing 10 games each throughout a season that will run from Feb. 9 up until the official NFL draft at the end of April, will have 50% fewer commercials than NFL games, shortening the play time to 2.5 hours. The belief is that shorter games will better lend themselves to higher fan engagement.
The league will employ former players Jared Allen and Justin Tuck, as well as J.K. McKay as head of football operations and Troy Polamalu as head of player relations. It will announce the coaches running these new teams next month.
The Founders Fund and Chernin Group are among its lead investors.