July 14th, 2010

Sirius XM Announces Fantasy Draft Event

Wednesday, July 14th, 2010

It’s been about two weeks since the Sirius XM fantasy sports channel hit the air, but a week from now will be the launch bash — centered on a football draft, of course.

The Hard Rock Cafe in Times Square will play host Wednesday to a daylong event featuring live broadcasts by multiple Sirius XM shows and a 12-man fantasy football draft with a field populated by station personalities — a list that includes Jaguars running back Maurice Jones-Drew.

“We’re assembling intriguing personalities from sports, talk, comedy and music in one place for an unprecedented event in the world of fantasy sports and we’re thrilled to share it with our subscribers,” Scott Greenstein, Sirius XM’s president and chief content officer, said in the media release.

Joining Jones Drew will be:

  • Chris “Mad Dog” Russo, a former New York city sports talk radio host who now fronts his on satellite channel
  • Steve Phillips, former Mets GM and ESPN analyst
  • Jeremy Roenick, former NHL star
  • Gary Dell’Abate, “BabaBooey” to anyone who would care
  • Jay Thomas, an actor and Sirius host
  • John Hansen of FantasyGuru.com
  • Kyle Elfrink of Fanball
  • Scott Engel of RotoExperts
  • Chris Liss of RotoWire
  • Scott Ferrall, who hosts a show on Howard Stern’s Sirius channel
  • Rich Davis, Ryan Sampson, Stanley T. and Nicole, who host Morning Mash Up on Sirius XM’s Hits 1

Where this draft differs, of course, from the typical celebrity draft is that it includes several real fantasy industry veterans. It’ll be interesting to see who among the non-fantasy pros can hold their own and if anyone, say, drafts Brett Favre at the top of Round 2.

The draft itself will broadcast live at 1 p.m. on both the fantasy channel and Sirius NFL radio, following a lead-in show by Adam Schein and former Raiders (and about 13 other NFL teams) quarterback Rich Gannon. The overall event will begin at 10 a.m.

If you take nothing else from this, it’s at least obvious that Sirius XM isn’t merely putting some fantasy stuff out there to fill a station. The company seems to realize that this is a strong market and one that deserved more attention than it might have previously been giving it (at least beyond previous shows by Hansen and the RotoWire crew).

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