Dive Brief:
- Yahoo Sports will launch fantasy football guillotine leagues in collaboration with Liquid Death, per details shared with Marketing Dive. In this type of league, the lowest scoring team each week is eliminated.
- Liquid Death logos and branding appear in league invitations and game screens, and can be added to team avatars. Surviving teams can kick the eliminated team’s “head” through the goalposts, sending it out of the stadium and “into eternity.”
- The collaboration brings Liquid Death into the ever-popular world of fantasy football. This season marks the first time Yahoo Sports will offer guillotine league functionality.
Dive Insight:
Liquid Death — the canned water brand known for its edgy marketing, heavy metal branding and “murder your thirst” tagline — is a natural partner for the launch of Yahoo Fantasy guillotine leagues. The league format is a even more competitive version of fantasy football, which has tens of millions players in the U.S.
“We are thrilled to blend Yahoo Fantasy’s innovation and gameplay with Liquid Death’s world-class creativity and, together, put our own unique spin on fantasy guillotine leagues,” said Ryan Spoon, president of Yahoo Media Group, in a statement.
The launch is billed by Yahoo as a way to engage with its millions of fantasy users and engage the next generation of fans. Yahoo staked out a leading position in fantasy football back in 1999 and has remained an industry leader, but has faced changes in sports gambling and competition from betting platforms like DraftKings and FanDuel.
Liquid Death’s logo is featured in the game and can be used as part of team avatars. Its branding is embedded throughout the experience, including draft loading, survival and elimination screens. Plus, the elimination game features a beheading animation in line with Liquid Death’s grim style.
That style is on display in an online spot that shows three fantasy players who have their necks in guillotines while watching football at a sports bar. Two beheadings happen off-screen, although some blood splashes on a can of Liquid Death and a smartphone with Yahoo branding.
Liquid Death this year has remained active with the type of earned media-spurring marketing stunts with which it has built its brand. The brand teamed with a then-pregnant Kylie Kelce to sell Liquid Death Mini Kegs, took on prebiotic soda with a “toilet taste test,” and sold Ozzy Osbourne’s DNA (a month before the musical icon’s death). It also made a major foray into paid media, running its first national Super Bowl spot.
For Yahoo Sports, the launch kicks off its “28 Days of Fantasy” campaign, which will introduce a new feature a day to mark the 28th year of Yahoo Fantasy Football.