With the European football seasons nearing their end and the title races already decided in several leagues, the focus will soon shift to the European Championships and the business of the transfer market.
While there will undoubtedly be new records set for player transfer values in this year’s window, including some marquee deals and the usual wheeling and dealing, the 2016/17 football season is going to see some real changes for supporters.
In recent weeks, several deals have been signed which will bring the big American daily fantasy sports operators into the European football marketplace. FanDuel, DraftKings and MondoGoal have all signed agreements with major clubs in a bid to provide access to their global audiences.
The 2015/16 season saw the deal of the year struck between the surprise package of the English Premier League, Leicester City, and Oulala, a daily fantasy Premier League operator.
The arrival of the big American operators has several reasons. Firstly, their massive advertising campaigns at the start of the most recent NFL season brought them to everyone’s attention, including regulators. This has lead to a number of US states questioning their legality. This advertising binge also managed to annoy many consumers. Expanding into some virgin territory might provide some respite. While many of these situations are still to be resolved, the legal doubts and challenges to their business model make European expansion quite sensible.
This will bring changes for consumers and supporters. Daily fantasy sports is very much a numbers game and statistical data is vital for decision making. European football coverage has become more analytical in recent years, but this is almost certainly about to go into overdrive as we begin to learn every statistical detail there is in print and television media coverage.
Even more, it will almost certainly apply to all the major European football leagues (La Liga in Spain, Ligue 1 in France, Serie A in Italy and the Bundesliga in Germany) as well as the English Premier League.