No one will deny that the NFL is the Big Kahauna in sports. The NFL has turned itself into a year round sport and sports fans eat it up.
One of the aspects that the NFL brass doesn’t like to talk about publicly is the appeal of the NFL to sports gamblers. Each week millions are bet on the NFL both legally and illegally.
The growth of fantasy leagues has exploded and there’s plenty of money involved there too.
Golf has arrived a bit late to this party of fantasy leagues and gambling but golf is one of the fastest growing choices offered to the on-line sports gambler.
Golf fantasy leagues are nothing new but the take that on-line gambling site, DraftKings has put on it certainly is.
One of the main attractions is that DraftKings offers players a chance to change their lineup each day by offering not just tournament contests but daily contests within the tournament.
Daily and weekly contests are a relatively new phenomenon in the fantasy sports world, but they have proven to be wildly popular — not to mention wildly lucrative for the companies that administer them. Gone are the days when fantasy enthusiasts’ only option was to ride one squad for the duration of a season. Now, with the rise of the two biggest players in the industry, FanDuel and DraftKings, along with a slew of smaller start-ups, fantasy fans can live and die with one team in their sport of choice — football, baseball, basketball, golf, soccer, mixed martial arts — and then hit the reset button the next day with an entirely new roster.
DraftKings Big Masters Contest
There are contests for all comers. The antes for DraftKings’ Doral competitions ranged from 25 cents (for a “Micro Millions” event that awarded a modest $250 for first place) to $10,600 (for a mano-a-mano match-up that paid off $20,000). Turcotte’s high-roller event, which the site dubbed the Miami Classic, paid a cool $100,000 for first place, $40,000 for second, $20,000 for third, and on down the line.
Golf is a relative newcomer to the weekly fantasy landscape, but it is rapidly gaining popularity. Since DraftKings rolled out its golf offerings in January 2014, its number of golf users has grown more than eightfold, says DraftKings spokesperson Femi Wasserman. In February, more than 25 percent of DraftKings’ active users, perhaps jonesing for a fantasy fix in the wake of the NFL season, participated in a golf event. Presumably many more will join the mix in April, when the site runs a $20 buy-in Masters bonanza with a $2.2 million purse. First prize is a million bucks, which is thought to be the highest payout in fantasy golf history.
DraftKings and FanDuel are the two biggest on-line sports gambling sites and truth be told, I have dabbled with some NFL fantasy teams on Fanduel. FanDuel has yet to institute any play on golf so I may give DraftKings a shot.
For each major the boys here at Links Life Golf like to put our golf knowledge to the test and select our winners. Maybe we’ll go big time this season and put some on-line cash where our on-line mouth is.
Why not, it’s only money.
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