FanDuel Adds Fantasy Golf to its DFS Contest Offerings

Daily fantasy sports have been on the rise ever since their inception, especially with the major sports.  Recently, however, the major daily fantasy operators have begun to pay more attention to smaller sports.  With the idea of incorporating more sports in mind, FanDuel has now joined DraftKings in creating daily fantasy golf events.

Golf is already a growing fantasy sport and DraftKings has been running daily events for golf tournaments that pay out as much as $1 million or more.  Seeing room for even more DFS action, FanDuel has just announced that they will be joining their counterparts in creating golf events on their site before both daily fantasy giants are set to merge.  FanDuel’s setup, however, will be different than how events are set up on DraftKings.

“We had been looking at golf for over a year.”

– FanDuel CEO Nigel Eccels

DraftKings contests simply allow for a player to select six golfers for an entire tournament, so anyone looking to place a bet on a tournament would be stuck with these six players for all four rounds.  FanDuel will be tweaking this system by allowing players to pick a stable of golfers for the first two rounds of a tournament and then a new group for the final two rounds of the tournament.

FanDuel seems to be excited about adding golf to its growing list of fantasy sports.  CEO of FanDuel, Nigel Eccels, stated to Yahoo that “We had been looking at golf for over a year.  We were mindful of the regulatory environment, but now we have states passing laws and really setting the boundaries of what we can and can’t do.  We think there’s a golf product we can do that would be compliant with that and be an awesome experience.”

This will not only affect the fantasy community but also the PGA TOUR itself.  Daily fantasy games can bring in more fans and enhance a sport’s market.  This is something that PGA Commissioner Jay Monahan knows, as he told the Golf Channel in an interview, “We always look at something that other sports are doing, having success with, trends in the industry.  It’s something we’ve spent a lot of time on up to this point in time.  You look at DraftKings and FanDuel, you look at gaming in the international markets, there’s a lot of opportunity there.”

FanDuel golf contests are set to launch in March and it will be interesting to see if more people will get involved in fantasy golf with another major option available.

Cover Image via Flickr