While fantasy sports have been around for decades now, starting with american football in the early 1960s, the concept of daily fantasy is only a few years old. The difference between the two doesn’t seem especially huge on its face, but it’s resulted in an explosive new market, with players spending several billion in 2016 alone. In daily fantasy, a player choses a line-up of real world athletes for each individual game, rather than an entire season, and because each athlete comes with a price-tag in dollars, the player needs to spend their money wisely to come out ahead.
Currently two companies dominate the daily fantasy market in the United States, FanDuel and DraftKings. Can the universalizing potential of the blockchain break up this monopoly, and catapult daily fantasy to the global stage?
Blockchain-powered Fantasy
Even though football (soccer) the most popular sport in the world, there’s been very little progress in applying daily fantasy rules to the game. And this is to say nothing of other popular sports outside the US, such as Japanese and Korean baseball, cricket, and even esports. MyDFS is one of the companies moving to exploit this fertile ground with a soon to be released daily fantasy app for IOS and Android.
Decentralized digital-ledger technology is capable of bringing a new level of transparency to an industry damaged in recent years by scandal. All data points pertaining to the games can be viewed in an app just as they appear on the blockchain, ensuring that what you see is what you get. There’s no danger of manipulation going on behind the scenes, nor any possibility of human input error. You can look at player transactions, game stats, and your own winnings without a shred of doubt regarding their authenticity.
Smart contracts executed on the blockchain also mean you receive your winnings instantaneously, without a lugubrious slog through a network of middlemen. MyDFS makes use of the ERC-20 token for all transactions, meaning the app truly runs globally. Can you imagine having to constantly switch fiat currencies on the fly while playing in different leagues across the world? Thanks to cryptocurrency, you don’t have to. ERC-20 functions as a universal medium of exchange on the platform, with users able to transfer it into their native fiat or other altcoins at their leisure. The use of cryptocurrency also opens the playing field to digital athletes from all countries by sweeping aside any legal barriers that might have stopped them from playing.
The Token
MyDFS’s token is Proof of Stake (PoS), meaning every coin in existence has already been created, with no possibility of mining for more. While the pre-sale ended earlier this year, the crowdsale is fast approaching on July 10th, 2018; tokens go for 1 USD and can be purchased with Ethereum, Ethereum Classic, Bitcoin, Bitcoin Cash, Dash, and Litecoin. After the crowdsale, tokens will be tradable on a raft of major exchanges.
Unlike some ICOs, the tokens on sale have rich functionality within the app itself. You can use them to pay entrance fees for games, get your winnings (instead of in Ether), unlock bonus content in the games and the app, as well as hire other fantasy players on the platform to play for you.
With FanDuel and DraftKings staggered by bad press, regulatory concern, and party to an innovation stifling monopoly over the US market, the time is right for a new take on daily fantasy. If MyDFS can deliver the thrill of drafting and fielding your own sports team to the wider world, they can expect to mop the floor with the competition.
