Today, the Fan-Controlled Football League (FCFL), the only professional football league where fans call the shots, including the plays themselves in real-time, announced legendary boxing champion Mike Tyson as the seventh Team Owner | Fan Captain to join the Owner’s Box. In addition to calling on fans to shape his team’s destiny – from name selection, serving as the final call on team uniforms, to drafting the players – Tyson brings his passion for sports and trash-talking skills to the league. Once the inaugural season kicks off, fans will find Tyson live commentating throughout games via Twitch, where they will have the unprecedented opportunity to engage with The Champ in a way never before seen in the history of professional sports.
“I’m fired up about joining the FCFL as its newest Team Owner and Fan Captain, and even more so to demolishing the competition,” states Tyson when asked about what he’s looking forward to accomplishing in the FCFL. “Leading into opening day, I’ll be engaging with fans from across the globe to stoke excitement and participation in the development of the Baddest League on the Planet.”
Tyson joins a talented group of global influencers spanning the world of sports and entertainment, all of whom share one common factor – a fervidness for professional football. To date the FCFL has announced six FCFL fan captains, all of whom are Tyson’s ‘competition’ (if you can call them that), including Marshawn Lynch, Richard Sherman, Prince Royce, Kinda Funny, Bobby Bones, and Chad ‘Ochocinco’’ Johnson.
An undisputed heavyweight boxing champion and international entertainer known for his ‘take no prisoners’ approach, Tyson is also a serial entrepreneur; recent projects include a cannabis company called Tyson Ranch and a new podcast, HotBoxin, of which he produces and hosts.
“We are reinventing the sport of football for the digital age and a cultural phenomenon like Iron Mike could not be a better fit for this league. We are impossibly excited for him to bring his unparalleled energy, legendary smack talk, and unrivaled will to win to the FCFL,” shares Patrick Dees, FCFL co-founder and Chief Gaming Officer. “Tyson is a total badass and there is zero doubt in my mind that his team is going to be a force to be reckoned with and I for one, cannot wait to watch him stream his games on Twitch.”
The FCFL is the first professional sports league to combine the passion of live sports, the competitiveness of fantasy sports, the interactivity of video games, and the global reach of esports all into a live-streamed, real-life experience created for the digitally native fan.
Fans will create their team’s brand, hire (and fire, if necessary) a coaching staff, build roster through live fan-run draft, and call all their team’s plays in real-time. Games will be a seven-on-seven competition on a 50-yard field in a state-of-the-art production studio, creating a fast-paced, open style of play conducive to an action-packed sixty minutes of football. All games will be live streamed on Amazon’s Twitch, the world’s leading social video service and community for gamers and eSports. Using a brand new, unprecedented Twitch Extension, fans will get to use an interactive overlay that allows them to call the plays natively on top of the Twitch player.
To kick this announcement off the FCFL with WAX have partnered to give back to the fans who can enter to win one of three prizes anyone would be lucky to win: a pair of boxing gloves, a pair of boxing shoes, or a football – all of which are complete with Tyson’s autograph.