The PGA Tour has signed a new multi-year partnership with daily fantasy game platform DraftKings.
Under the deal, DraftKings will be designated as the first-ever ‘Official Daily Fantasy Game of the PGA Tour’.
The move follows a policy change at the PGA Tour earlier this year to allow official marketing partnerships and title sponsorships with companies in the daily fantasy sports category.
DraftKings will activate the partnership by branding its daily fantasy golf contests as ‘PGA Tour DraftKings Fantasy Golf’.
As part of the new relationship, the two organisations will also expand their draft fantasy sports-specific content and integrate the PGA Tour and DraftKings platforms.
Content innovations will include the ability for fantasy golf players to receive real-time video highlights for players in their respective fantasy line-ups, and a variety of real-time product enhancements via the PGA Tour’s proprietary ShotLink data feed.
Ezra Kucharz, chief business officer at DraftKings, said: “Golf continues to grow in popularity among DFS [daily fantasy sport] players globally at DraftKings, and is our fourth-largest sport in terms of engagement [behind NFL, NBA and MLB] out of 15 total offerings.”
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DraftKings said 30 per cent of its customer base, or more than 11 million people, have played in at least one golf contest, demonstrating the crossover appeal of the sport.
DraftKings has seen steady growth in daily fantasy golf entries each year, including a new peak of 20 million golf entries in 2018. Since 2015, DraftKings has also crowned 16 golf contest millionaires.
Despite the new deal, the PGA Tour will continue to run its free-to-play fantasy games, including PGA Tour Fantasy Golf, PGA Tour One&Done, and PGA Tour Champions One&Done.
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