Over the last year, we have seen numerous examples of how the San Francisco 49ers use Levi's Stadium outside of the ten 49ers preseason and regular season games. They have held concerts, college and high school football games, and of course Wrestlemania. Now, they are adding another option: fantasy football drafts.
The 49ers have a partnership deal with Yahoo!, and in conjunction with Yahoo! Fantasy Football, the 49ers will be hosting a fantasy football event at the stadium. On August 22, people can rent out luxury suites and host their drafts while discussing draft strategy with Yahoo! "draft experts". For $950, a group of up to 12 people gets access to a suite from 6-9 p.m., with pizza, wings and beer in the suite. There will also be an hour-long pre-draft welcome reception with food and beverage. For a group of 12, that $950 comes out to $79 per person. If you have a 14-team league, the extra two people can be added for $95 per person.
If you just do your draft online or via conference call, it is probably not worth doing. However, a lot of people do like to make an event out of their fantasy draft. The season itself is fun, but the fantasy draft is likely the highlight for a lot of teams that don't actually perform well during the season. I've known people who have BBQs around drafts, and others plan trips to Las Vegas. When I worked for the Bowie Baysox in 2002 (Baltimore Orioles AA minor league affiliate), a group of friends rented out a luxury suite to run their fantasy draft.
It will be interesting to see how many groups they get to take advantage of this opportunity. Given some of the demographics of the Bay Area, particularly the South Bay, I imagine they will sell this pretty well. If you are interested in doing something like this, click HERE.
Speaking of fantasy football, we will in fact have NN leagues this year. We've had a couple FanPosts go up this past week, including this one and this one. I'm still sorting through things, but we'll get something together in August.