This upcoming NFL season will mark the debut of Reignmakers, an NFT fantasy game that DraftKings considers to be its fourth signature gaming offering—as potentially meaningful to the business as daily fantasy sports, betting and iGaming. Reignmakers Football is licensed by the NFLPA and is the first of multiple games that will be part of the Reignmakers brand, as UFC expanded its deal with DraftKings to launch its own version for NFT-collecting MMA fans.
“This is our first product that we’ve launched in the last several years, and we definitely do not every year take on something large and meaningful at DraftKings,” DraftKings co-founder and president Matt Kalish said in a product demo call with journalists. “If we’re taking it on instead of focusing on other things with our core business, that means we obviously think it’s going to be popular, that we could acquire and retain and satisfy lots of players over the course of time.”
The premise of Reignmakers is pretty similar to traditional fantasy sports. Users collect digital player cards through auctions or pack openings and then insert those players into their team lineups and watch their players score points based off their real-life NFL performances. Whereas the earning potential for daily fantasy sports contests starts and stops with the prize pool affiliated with those contests, Reignmakers extends that a step further by also attaching monetary value to the collectible player cards bought and sold on the DraftKings NFT marketplace.
“The primary utility of the cards is being able to use them in contests where you [can] win over a million [dollars] every week of the season,” Kalish said. “And those contests, if you play daily fantasy sports, it will look familiar to you.”
Competitions will be divided across five tiers: Core, Rare, Elite, Legendary and Reignmaker — as only users who have collected cards belonging to that associated tier will be able to join certain contests bearing cash prizes. Core NFTs on DraftKings represent cards that are the most common, while Reignmaker is the rarest. The most lucrative NFL card sold so far on the DraftKings secondary marketplace was a “Reignmaker” edition of Buffalo Bills wide receiver Stefon Diggs that sold for $17,500. The average price of NFTs being sold on the marketplace is $56. DraftKings collects a 10% fee from the seller on all marketplace transactions. 
“You don’t need to even understand NFT or Web3 technology to play the game. In fact, I don’t think you ever need to mention the word NFT to fully explain the game or almost fully explain it. And in some cases, it’s probably best to not mention the word NFT because I would say right now there’s, typically speaking, tremendous amounts of skepticism about the NFT space,” Kalish said. “Most projects are probably down like 80-90% in the last six to 12 months. I’d say the average fantasy sports player or collector is probably immensely skeptical about any new NFT project. And often it’s not helpful or necessary to even mention the fact that the way that the cards come into existence is that they’re NFTs on the Polygon blockchain.”
From a legislative perspective, Reignmakers Football is available in all states where DraftKings operates its daily fantasy sports contests. While the concept of Reignmakers Football is quite similar to customary fantasy sports contests, DraftKings believes its NFT fantasy product enables the company to engage with consumers from communities outside of traditional fantasy sports.
“We see [Reignmakers] as a product that intersects a lot of different areas of interest for a lot of people—some people who come from a variety of backgrounds that aren’t even current DraftKings customers, but maybe they like EA Sports Ultimate Team or they played Magic the Gathering or other competitive CCGs [collectible card games],” Kalish said. “Or they got into crypto and NFTs two years ago, or they like breaking sports cards. All of those interest groups really intersect well with the interest around fantasy sports.”
Comedian Kevin Hart starred in a national TV ad for Reignmakers Football that debuted earlier this month and included cameos from NFL players such as Diggs, Lamar Jackson and Ezeqiel Elliot. The NFLPA has a revenue sharing agreement with DraftKings for Reignmakers, so the players have a financial incentive to help promote the game.
“Through our relationship with the NFLPA, we have tremendous amounts of access to make deals with players and can use that relationship to identify players who want to be more involved in the game, participate in advertising and do experiences,” Kalish said. “We are in it together in many ways and the players are part and parcel with that.”
Photo credits: Courtesy of DraftKings (lead); Bryan M. Bennett/Getty Images (Diggs)
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