Football is a sport that brings everyone together, even if you’re not a diehard fan or have never played the game yourself. The rush of energy that comes with rooting for your favorite team and arm-chair-quarterbacking an entire game is something people around the world do every Sunday.
For those who need to live, eat and breathe football throughout the week, fantasy football is an essential part of the pageantry leading up to every week’s packed NFL schedule. It’s a packed space, with Yahoo!, ESPN and the NFL itself having online leagues you can join with your friends and strangers. The model hasn’t changed though, with the premise being selecting the players that you think will perform the best throughout the season, collecting points as they play games week after week.
A familiar name and face, four-time Super Bowl champion quarterback, Joe Montana, has his own spin on fantasy football, and will be releasing an app called iMFL prior to the start of this year’s NFL season. The app is part fantasy football, part predictive social “game,” with the ability to place bets with friends as games play out in real-time. For example, you could guess that the next play will be an interception. If you’re right, the points are yours. The hope is that you’ll be playing around with iMFL on your iPhone or iPad while you watch the game with friends, no matter where they are.
Montana and his co-founder Damon Grow, CEO of Crowdmob, came into the office to give us an exclusive preview:
The app isn’t available yet, but it will be out on Apple’s App Store, so get ready. It’s a crowded space, but I think with the in-app purchases and constant real-time engagement, iMFL could do well. This isn’t a one-time thing for Montana, as he tells me that there are a few other projects that he’s working on which he’ll share with us soon.
Bonus: This isn’t Montana’s first “game,” as fans will remember Joe Montana’s Sports Talk Football for Sega Genesis. It was impressive back in 1991, but the Madden series won out and become a blockbuster success: