According to a press release posted on the NBA website, the Minnesota Timberwolves are the latest professional basketball team to enter into a partnership with the dominant daily fantasy sports company in the fledgling industry, DraftKings.
Ryan Tanke, Senior Vice President and Chief Revenue Officer for the Timberwolves was quoted as saying, “Fantasy sports gaming is a huge and rapidly growing industry and is something that many of our fans are interested and engaged in.”
“This partnership and industry category opens up some great new opportunities to further connect and engage with our fans.”
The deal with the Timberwolves marks the third NBA team DraftKings has partnered with.
“DraftKings is our first partner from the fantasy sports industry, and we are proud to align our franchise with an organization that has such an incredible reach and customer base,” Tanke added.
For their part, rival one-day fantasy sports site FanDuel has individual deals with a handful of teams and a league-level deal with the NBA.
In addition to DraftKings and the Timberwolves partnering on upcoming social media promotions, the deal will also mean that DraftKings will be involved in the Timberwolves’ podcast, the WolvesCast. DraftKings-branded digital signage will be visible court side.
The co-founder and CMO of DraftKings, Paul Liberman, remarked, “We want daily fantasy sports to engage and electrify fans, and we’re looking forward to making that happen for Timberwolves fans by providing them with unique experiences and new ways to interact with the sport.”
