While ESPN consistently promotes its free fantasy football games, it has not completely abandoned the pay model. Fanball and ESPN just unveiled their new $50,000 Fantasy Football game. It is a pay-to-play salary cap game with point-style scoring, where the winner will take home a cool $50,000. Not too shabby for a $39.95 entry fee.

More importantly, the fact that two of the major players in the fantasy industry are teaming together on a game should make you take note. ESPN has become the number two player (behind Yahoo!) by offering completely free fantasy games. Fanball is the leader in pay-to-play games under its own brand, and hosting white-label games, such as the Fantasy Football Open Championship. According to Ryan Houson, Fanball’s Vice-President of Business Development, that this game came about through, “Lots of discussions. We discussed this a lot and we are excited it finally got done.” It is a win-win deal for both sides. It allows ESPN to tap into the pay-to-play market, while giving Fanball another game to market to its existing customer base, and more importantly, the ability to market to the millions of fantasy players that play at ESPN.

Congratulations to both sides on the deal, and I look forward to see how this relationship develops. If this is successful, you better expect to see something come fantasy baseball season.