‘League of Legends’ Fantasy Draft Site Set To Launch January 19
League of Legends and other eSports games are only getting more popular the further we go into the 21st century. In fact, games like League of Legends are becoming so popular that schools have started offering scholarships to the best players in the world. The skill the best eSports players have is both a blessing and a curse to those who may not be quite as good.
There is something to be said for watching people who truly understand every nuance of League of Legends, the same way other people watch the NFL, MLB, or NBA. On the other hand, the average player knows they can never really match up against those top players, just like the school yard basketball players aren’t ever really going to be able to match up against the stars of the NBA.
On Monday, a new startup called AlphaDraft wants to help amateur League of Legends players be able to follow their favorite eSports players a bit closer. AlphaDraft will launch a fantasy draft kind of site that sports fans are used to seeing when it comes to pro football, baseball, or basketball. As VentureBeat points out, the site will be completely free to join, but then eSports fans can spend real money on a kind of daily fantasy draft.
The difference, of course, is that instead of drafting the best sluggers in baseball, you’ll be drafting the best players from around the world who compete in League of Legends tournaments. The site is going to move slowly towards allowing people to use real cash, starting out using “points,” but AlphaDraft definitely is going to be moving towards a system that will be a combination of points and dollars.
The move into the fantasy league world is a no-brainer for plenty of sites. Fantasy football alone is now a $70 billion per year market alone. If AlphaDraft can find a way to get the dollars of League fans, the startup could become quite lucrative really, really soon. The January 19 expected launch of the service comes at the same time when services like Twitch have made it easier and more compelling to watch other people play video games.
The ability to draft a fantasy league, and then sit down and watch your draft picks go up against their most hated rivals, is why the site could work rather well for a specific group of gamers. If this move pays off for AlphaDraft, it could make League of Legends even bigger, and that would be quite the accomplishment considering its rapid rate of growth already.
