Super Bowl LV is a little over a week away. The Tampa Bay Buccaneers and the Kansas City Chiefs will be facing each other on February 7. The two teams feature some of the NFL’s greatest players currently on the field.
For fans that get frustrated by the plays called by coaches or the players included in the lineup, a new league has started that can switch-out all those frustrations.
Fan Controlled Football League
A completely different league is also gaining the attention of football fans that are also internet savvy.
The newest league is called Fan Controlled Football. The fans are in control of everything that teams and players do. Therefore, it’s time for football fans that feel like they have the knowledge to make play calls and decide who goes where to shine.
Today, the league announced that it signed former NFL quarterback Johnny Manziel to be a part of the internet-meets-choose-your-own-adventure football league.
Fans have already been hard at work in deciding things like names, logos, uniforms, coaches, and players.
There are some substantial differences to how this game will be played compared to NFL-level football, however. For example, it will only be 7-on-7. The field will be only 50 yards and filmed inside of a television studio. Even more than sports, the goal of Fan Controlled Football is all-around interactive entertainment.
The league currently consists of four different teams: the Glacier Boyz, the Beats, the Zappers, and the Wild Aces. There are also different ownership groups related to the league. This includes names like Quavo, Marshawn Lynch, Richard Sherman, Mike Tyson, and Austin Ekeler.
The league won’t start up until the NFL season is fully completed in hopes of getting as many frantic football fans as possible. It is set to start in mid-February.
Setting Themselves Apart From Other Leagues
FCF also announced today that fans can buy a piece of their favorite team using the private investing platform, Republic. Fans will actually have the same type of equity in teams as the list of celebrity owners.
While other leagues like Professional Spring Football League and XFL have tried to mimic the popularity of the NFL, they have always fallen flat. FCF is hoping their concept is far-off enough that it will provide a new form of appeal and entertainment to football lovers.
“This is an entertainment and technology company where the product is football on the field. We wanted to create something scalable. It is a reinvention of the model itself to deliver interactive sports experience to the digital audience. When you do that, the cost structure is turned on its head,” FCF cofounder and CEO Sohrob Farudi said to Forbes.
Other attempted leagues just tried to sell normal football to people, but that is a broken strategy. “Not to be reductive or denigrate those guys, but they were just trying to be another NFL. They were just trying to put butts in seats and sell those butts beers. They wanted to work their way up to rights fees. That model is fundamentally broken,” Patrick Dees, Co-Founder of FCF said.
Twitch and Revenue
Most of the finances will come from fans making in-app purchases and the subscription revenue from Twitch, which is where the show will premiere. This video game streaming platform has recently launched a sports category last summer that has helped build a sports fanbase. The platform has 26 million daily users.
FCF wants to reinvent football. For fans who think of particular moves in the NFL that have made their blood boil, this will be the moment to make your own choices. Fans will register for any team at the start of the season and follow through with all the decision-making at hand. Keeping up with social media and talking to fellow fans will be a key part of interacting with the league.
The first game will premiere February 13.
H/T: Forbes, For The Win
