FanDuel DFS Partnership with The Washington Redskins

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FanDuel announced the latest partnership between an NFL team and a fantasy sports site. This was an important move for FanDuel as it marks their first partnership with an NFL team, after lagging behind DraftKings.com in the NFL arena. DraftKings has already secured a partnership with the Patriots, so FanDuel.com needed to snag a team of its own.

The agreement looks a lot like other similar partnerships we’ve seen thus far in the industry. FanDuel will now be the official daily fantasy site of the Washington Redskins. This means FanDuel.com will get exposure at FedExField and across all of the Redskins’ social media and digital platforms.

With football being the single largest market for fantasy sports, FanDuel and DraftKings are both racing to lock in partnership agreements with teams. Now that each has a team of its own, the race is on for the NFL.

It’s also worth noting that both FanDuel and DraftKings already have one partnership each with an entire pro league. DraftKings partnered with the NHL last Monday and then two days later, FanDuel reached an agreement with the NBA. I can imagine how badly both sites would love to have an agreement with the entire NFL. Partnering with individual teams is perhaps the first step accomplishing just that.

The NFL is notoriously stubborn and has a long history of lobbying against sports betting or anything that even looks like sports gambling. With that in mind, partnerships between teams and fantasy sites provide a huge sense of legitimacy to the budding industry. As I explained in the post linked-to above, having the NFL on their side gives fantasy sites powerful lobbying allies that could very well save the industry from antagonistic legislative actions.

Sports leagues seem to take the view that real money fantasy leagues keep viewers tuned in. I look at it this way. What’s the best way to get someone to watch a game they don’t care about? Give that person a stake on the outcome. Fantasy lineups consist of players from all around the league and give more people a reason to catch games they wouldn’t normally watch. And even if someone doesn’t “watch” the game, that person is still going to check scores, visit websites, talk to his friends and basically just spend more time with NFL on the mind.

Whatever the case may be, this partnership is just the latest in a string of agreements that FanDuel has struck with major teams and leagues. FanDuel already has agreements in place with five individual NBA teams (Knicks, Nets, Magic, Bulls and Mavericks) and the NBA itself.

Related: DraftKings DFS Partnership with the Philadelphia 76ers

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