When people hear “golden ticket,” a certain chocolate factory comes to mind.
If you win this golden ticket, you might earn enough to buy your own chocolate factory.
As a way to get fans even more amped up for the start of the Denver Broncos and NFL 2020 season, DraftKings is holding its initial, and massive, $100 Million Golden Ticket Giveaway.
It’s the DFS version of a football survival pool, and it guarantees one participant $1 million in cash.
DraftKings Sportsbook Director of Operations Johnny Avello told PlayColorado:
“We want to reach everyone, and it’s not possible at this time. We’re in 10 different states or so. And that’s the way to get to everyone. We do these pools all the time and they reach everyone, but we wanted to make a bigger splash. If you see the pools we do, we do a football survivor pool. We do a weather pool. We do presidential elections and that kind of stuff. But we wanted to have something big that would reach everyone and this does it.”
Golden Ticket Giveaway open to everyone
The best way to reach people is to open the survivor pool to everyone.
That means the DraftKings Golden Ticket is available to fans in states who don’t have legalized sports betting.
It’s also free to play.
All you have to do is choose correctly.
How the survivor pool works
To play, you sign into or create a DraftKings account and reserve your entry in the $1 Million NFL Survivor Pool. That gains players access to the Golden Ticket Giveaway.
DraftKings will post survivor picks for Week 1 starting on Sept. 8, two days ahead of the Houston Texans–Kansas City Chiefs season opener. The $1 million pool prize could go to a single champion or be split among multiple winners.
Once you reserve your spot in the survivor pool, you can claim a free reward that ranges in value from $5 to $25,000. You can then opt into the Golden Ticket Giveaway sweepstakes, where one winner is guaranteed $1 million. That drawing is scheduled for Sept. 13.
Through various contests, customers can compete all season long for another free shot at a $1 million top prize.
Avello said:
“Coming into football, usually it’s baseball only. But to then have the NBA, hockey and baseball all going at once is something new. And those sports are just doing so well, so it’s not like the customer base is craving for football. They’ve got quite a bit of content right now to play.”
What is a survivor pool?
The game is as simple as it sounds: You choose one team to win each week in order to “survive.”
Your weekly pick must be submitted before 11 a.m. MST each Sunday during the regular season for all Sunday and Monday games. Thursday picks are due before the game’s kickoff.
If you and your team “survive,” you can play again next week.
The challenge comes from the fact you cannot pick the same team twice. So if you pick Drew Lock and the Broncos to beat the Tennessee Titans in the season opener, you can’t go with the Broncos the rest of the season. So your choice of teams shrinks the further you advance.
If you’re the last player standing, you claim the prize of sole survivor. If multiple players are still alive at the end of the last week of the regular season, the prize pool is shared.
Do you have what it takes to win the DraftKings Golden Ticket? For this one, you don’t have to buy a candy bar from a certain chocolate factory to win.