RADIO
This article is going to give you a look into the basics of DraftKings ReignMakers, provide you with some strategy to attack the market with, useful websites I stumbled across along the way, as well as a ReignMaker model that I built for myself to try determine where I believe there is value. I have done it for three weeks now and it has been a lot of fun buying and selling cards, using them in lineups and feeling like a Wall Street titan regardless of the budget I allocated to my initial player pool.
It can appear a little overwhelming, as I had to do countless hours of research and internet browsing to find the answers that you will find with minimal effort below. Sit back, relax and let the world of ReignMakers engulf your life with short term upside as well as long term profitability, if you play your cards right, pun intended.
This is going to be a weekly article where I share my favorite plays for each week, a week in advance and potentially two or three weeks ahead if the right golfer comes along at the right price. You can find me on Twitter an unhealthy amount of the time @TheModelManiac, if you have any questions, compliments, or insults for me. Let's make it Reign!!
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What is DraftKings ReignMakers?
ReignMakers is basically a marketplace to purchase NFTs of varying rarities that you can then enter into DFS contests for the rest of the season. The card is yours once you purchase it and that player scores the same points as he would in a normal DFS contest. If you want to start a particular golfer in multiple lineups that week, you will need to purchase multiple NFTs of said golfer to roster him in those lineups.
Once lineups lock, that golfer is useless for the rest of the week. You will get him back after the contest to use next week, if he is playing in that event. It is important to note that the lifespan of a card is through the Tour Championship, which is the last event of this season and the cards value will most likely be void upon its completion. You will either need to sell your cards before hand, or have those cards entered into the contest, hoping to win cash in the contest to make up for the lack of resale value.
The DFS contests score points the same way as a normal Classic PGA DFS weeklong contest with one or two minor differences. You only roster 5 golfers. 1 of the golfers is your captain and scores x1.5 points for the week. There is no salary cap to the lineup, so you can roster the 5 best golfers in the field if you choose to do so. This obviously will mean you have to spend well above the average card price to purchase these golfers for the week, if you don't already have them.
How do I get my hands on NFTs?
If you want to get your feet wet in the whole process you are provided with an option to choose which FREE starter pack you want to rip. It will guarantee you the golfer the pack in named after along with 7 other STARTER cards that can be played in CORE/RARE contests. It looks like there will be an Augusta Starter Pack dropping on Tuesday. I would wait till then to choose your starter pack as you will then guarantee you can roster a full lineup.
You can also purchase golfers on the open market, buy packs that have random golfers in them, or win them through contests you have entered. I have leaned towards purchasing the golfer I want on the open market, as it assures me that I will be able to attain the golfer I want without relying on the random luck you have to deal with when opening packs.
Unfortunately, golfers like Rich Beem and David Hearn are part of the player pool and they will show up in packs, rendering them useless for most contests. You can still sell them on the open market, though, but their price will not fetch much. You can also get lucky and rip a Scottie but you may have land up spending quite a lot for this to happen, which is why I prefer to buy the golfers.
Why is the same golfer a different price?
There are 5 rarity tiers: CORE (C), RARE (R), ELITE (E), LEGENDARY (L), REIGNMAKER (RM). Currently, Scottie Scheffler (below) is the highest priced golfer on the market. You will notice that there is no RM card available to purchase as there is only 1 RM per golfer and their prices start at $10,000+ for most of them.
This is the part where economics comes into play, as the price of the card is reflective of the supply in the market. There are #/3000 and #/960 edition tiers of CORE cards for each golfer. The average price of a card increases the less of those cards available, hence the cheapest Scottie is a #/3000 edition tier, with a #/960 fetching a slightly higher price. These are the only two tiers of CORE cards.
The price of a card is also impacted by its rarity as the rarity of the card determines what contests you can enter them into - more on this in the next section. The RARE cards have three types of edition count tiers, #/600, #/240, and #/120. As you can see with Scottie's cards above, the price of each R card increases as the numbers of cards available decreases. The next aspect of a cards price is determined by the unique edition count of that card.
Above are the asking prices on the open market for that *$399 #/120 Scottie card (*the price changed while putting this mammoth of an article together). As a rule of thumb, the edition # (green highlight) of each specific card in that edition tier will drive the price up or down, with prices spiking the closer you get to #1. There is a #1 in each of edition tier (1/120, 1/240, 1/600) but having a 1/120 is worth more on the market than 1/600, simply because it accounts for 0.83% of the market compared to 0.17%.
Lower edition count = higher price. The main reason for this is because in the case of a tie in a contest, the lowest total edition counts of the 5 cards in each lineup will receive FULL points for the position that is tied for, while the loser of the tiebreak will receive the prize money of the next position. Now, regardless of edition tier, a #1/600 will count the same as a #1/120, so there is some value to finding a low edition count regardless of the edition tier it is in. This provides you with a unique opportunity to decide what kind of contests you want to enter.
Did you know RotoBaller has a Premium DFS PGA subscription? Like what you read today? You can show your support for Byron by using the discount code MANIAC when purchasing a PGA Premium Pass. You get 10% off and full access to all of our Premium PGA articles, DFS tools, models, projections and Lineup Optimizer! You also get access to weekly betting picks from Spencer Aguiar, one of the top betting minds in the industry.
End of the Season Totals: @rotoballer @BettorGolfPod
2017 +54.26 Units
2018 +55.88 Units
2019 +27.743 Units
2020 + 37.015 Units
2021 + 68.846 Units
2022 +67.485 UnitsTotal Winnings: +311.229 Units
Total Outright Wins Since 2017: 36
H2H Totals Inside Thread… https://t.co/pNQrSK1rFE
— Spencer Aguiar (@TeeOffSports) December 12, 2022
Which contests can/should I enter?
Once you have bought your cards, they are yours to keep and contests are free to enter,as long as you have enough cards to roster lineups of 5 golfers. There are single entry, 3 entry, and 150 entry contests available in each rarity level. The single and 150 entry contests typically payout like a GPP, with a severe drop off in payout from 1st place to 20th place. The 3 entry contests are labelled "bank roll builders" and are essentially cash / double ups with the top X amount of players getting paid the same $X.
This is why I mentioned earlier that you have a decision to make on what cards to buy. Edition count is exorbitantly more important in the GPP-type contests as the risk of a high edition count lineup costing you money in case of a tie, is higher in the tiered payout contests, especially if you are vying for top-5 prize money.
In a bank roll builder contest, you can tie and simply go from 30th to 31st and still receive the same payout as the top-50 would all receive the same amount. When I think of these contests, I think of grabbing Sungjae Im type cards at low price with high edition counts, and entering them into the bankroll builder contests. Look at it as an annuity, which will steadily payout throughout the season at a relatively low investment.
To give you an example of the $$$ behind a RARE single-entry contest, the lineup I entered of Matt Kuchar, Thomas Detry, Sam Ryder, Nick Taylor, and Brendon Todd cost $165 to buy in weeks prior to the event, with 7th place ($200) essentially paying for all 5 of those cards for the rest of the season. However, 25-60th place will only pay out $25, which equates to 14% of the field getting paid in this contest that had 427 entries.
I also entered into the 3 entry max, with the top 50 receiving $50. There were 334 entrants in this contest this week, paying out 15% of the field. The fun part about this contest is that 10th place in single entry heading into R4 had scored 358 points, while a measly 303 points would have you in the same position in the bankroll builder. The lineups in these contests are much weaker as everybody is entering their best players into single entry contests. It may be far less entertaining to enter these contests, but boring money is the same as exciting money.
You can play a card of a higher rarity in any of the lower contests, but you can't play a CORE card in an ELITE contest, which is another smaller benefit to purchasing the rarer cards. However, the price you paid for an E card, will most likely not be recouped entering it into lower tier contests as the payout amounts increase as you go up the contest rarity tiers, to reflect the price of the cards required to play in them.
In order to enter a RARE contest you need at least 4 RARE cards, with you 5th allowed to be a CORE, which allows you to buy an a top rated golfer in the C market at the fraction of the price of R, while still getting the same production in points. There are, however, two caveats to this: 1) Your captain (x1.5 points) has to be the same (or higher) rarity of the contest 2) Your edition count will most likely take a major hit as below are the cheapest CORE Scheffler cards, starting at #1642. To get a Scheffler #71 CORE the fetching price is $115, (#36 $159, #22 $200)
There are also different prize-tiers based off the event status of that week. Elevated events are Deluxe (biggest), while the Valspar was a Premium, and alternate events are standard. Below is the schedule for each event and its respective purse.
How to profit without entering contests?
Another really exciting aspect of RM is the fact that you can profit off of golfers without even entering them into contests. If you are somebody who likes to be proactive and look a few weeks into the future, you can purchase a golfer who will not be playing in any of the next two events, but will playing in three weeks time. The price of that golfer "should" go up over the next few weeks with the price peaking the Wednesday night before the event.
How cool is that? You can buy and sell golfers based on your perception of their expected demand. This strategy was perfectly illustrated this week at the Valero, with Hatton seeing about a 50-75% increase in market price simply because he was grading out as the best golfer in the field, with very little other top rated players playing this week. If you bought two Hatton cards prior to the match play, you could have sold one and played one this week, with the sold card paying for half of the card you rostered. This is an example of short-term profitability.
***Note: There is a 10% fee on the sale of cards, which chews into the profit you make on them, but the market seems to fluctuate enough to over come this, for now.
You can also apply the same approach to golfers who have a lower market price than you think they are worth. You can benefit from this approach in two ways: 1) If you are correct about their trajectory over the course of the season, in a few months you can sell them at a much higher price than you bought them 2) While you are waiting on their price to skyrocket, you are rostering them in your contests, which they are hopefully playing well in as that is what they need to do anyway, if their price were to increase over the long run.
When to buy, hold, or sell?
As we discussed earlier, there are short and long term elements to a golfers value. Knowing when to buy, sell, or hold a golfer is ultimately the easiest way to make money off of their resale value and contest output.
I will disclose a few golfers who I have bought a few cards of that I think are currently underpriced for their long term outlook: Max Homa, Patrick Cantlay, Cameron Young, Jason Day, Sungjae Im and Sahith Theegala are a few golfers who I think can easily see their price soar if they can play to the potential I believe they have.
I used the "Group by Rarity" toggle, to show the cheapest available card of each golfer because and obviously all the cheapest cards are #/600. The "BIG 3" are all sitting around $200 for the cheapest RARE, while Homa and Cantlay are roughly $80 less than them. Whether the BIG 3 can outproduce them by 40% over the duration of the season, is not yet clear, but what we do know is that the BIG 3 are most likely priced within 10-15% of their max market price.
Would it shock you if Max wins at LA CC and his price ends up being close to $200 by the time playoffs roll around? What if Patrick Cantlay finishes T5 at Augusta and then wins at Harbour Town the week after? To me, golfers of their caliber, who still have roughly worth $50-$70 of potential growth regarding their peak price point, are much more appealing to me as they can profit long term profitability while also pumping out impressive results on a weekly basis at almost half the price of the BIG 3.
***When you plan on selling your cards, make sure that you delist them an hour or so before lock. I had two lineups have a golfer get bought 3 minutes before lock. Those lineups are dead from the get-go.
How to determine the value of an NFT?
There is a short/long term element to each golfer's price and below is how each golfer was priced heading into the Valero from a long-term viewpoint. In order to derive my own price for a golfer (LT TMM Market Value) I used the following criteria.
Long Term Criteria
- A long-term rating of the golfer's overall skillset
- A combination of their strokes gained total L50 + their trajectory (how their SG Total was trending over a long/medium/short time frame)
- PGA Priority List # (I want to know which events a golfer will be able to play in)
- FedEx Cup Points (The Final Event of the season is the Tour Championship, which will feature 30 of the top FEC points scorers. The more FEC points you have right now, the better your chances are of making it to the Tour Championship.)
Short Term Criteria
- The same calculation as above
- The golfer's rating for the upcoming tournament they are playing in
- A tinge of short + medium trajectory
- Notice the change in value for Tyrrell Hatton simply because he was playing the Valero with nobody else in his price range teeing it up.
How to get your hands on the model?
I have entered the above criteria into my model to determine which golfer shows the biggest difference in market price vs model price. I will be doing an article on targets for the Masters, RBC Heritage and Mexico Open which will come out on Monday morning.
Useful Resources
I have had two revered guests on my Podcast where we strictly talk about ReignMakers that go into the basics and nuances of their process and approach each week.
These are a few websites that I have found to helpful in my research process.
DraftKings Reignmakers PGA TOUR: Last Chance to Purchase Eagle Genesis Packs - DraftKings Nation - The nuances of what is in a pack, contest payouts by event, and more.
StreamNFT.com - DraftKings Reignmaker Tools and Analysis. Collection: PGA - All Transactions - A really cool website that shows details about cards for sale, that have been sold, etc. You can research a golfers history by rarity to see how their price has moved over time.
2022-2023 Priority Ranking - PGA TOUR - PGA Tour Priority Rankings to determine who is eligible for what events
I really hope you enjoyed this article and found it useful to kick start your ReignMaker journey or to polish up on some things you may not have been sure about.
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