Sportando reported that DraftKings and Euroleague have announced an official partnership which will offer Euroleague DFS contests for the 2017-18 Euroleague season.
DraftKings will help remodel Euroleague’s Fantasy Challenge, which has been the competitions fantasy game since 2004. It will also offer other fantasy competitions for Euroleague itself and the 7DAYS Eurocup.
This is great news for the league. Euroleague grew in popularity last season as it underwent the new 16-team, 30-game regular season format. According to Nielsen reports the league’s live TV audience grew 32 percent and its online audience grew 166 percent. In-game attendance grew as well, as fans per game rose from 7,136 to 8,177, that’s a 15 percent increase.
While the league could settle at that increase in viewership, it’s clear that they’re not with the DraftKings partnership announcement. Regardless of where you stand on Daily Fantasy Sports – whether it’s good or bad, gambling or skill – you can’t argue that increases fan interest.
DFS has done a great job of making fans upgrade from casual viewers to nuanced viewers, and has also helped people gain interests in sports and leagues they never would’ve watched if it wasn’t for DraftKings.
DraftKings helped lead to a 12 percent increase in NBA League Pass sales for the 2015-16 season. They also had a massive effect on golf ratings, especially with millennials. DFS Golf lead to a 29 percent increase in millennial viewership for the Golf Channel back in June 2016.
The Canadian Football League became a partner with DraftKings for their 2016 season and they saw a 3.5 percent increase in viewership from the 2015 season.
With the fantastic track record of DFS helping to improve viewership for sports and leagues around the globe, the same impact is expected for the already growing Euroleague.
The DFS competitions could also help Euroleague get their games on more television channels here in the United States – currently, there’s only one game a week, on replay, on NBATV – and it could also help push advanced stats on Euroleague players being available to the general public.
As someone whose interest in basketball was rekindled by DFS a few years back, I’ve been advocating for DraftKings to add Euroleague competitions for a year now to help the league’s popularity grow in the United States and to help DFS grow in Europe.
I’ve been in support of this for awhile now @DraftKings pic.twitter.com/zYvsijKeXd
— Andrew Bernucca (@krosoveri) July 5, 2017
