Understanding Marketplace Dynamics, Rarity Tiers, and Golfer Cards in Reignmakers PGA Tour

Building upon their success with Reignmakers NFL and UFC, DraftKings has launched Reignmakers PGA Tour, a new game with licensed golfer cards featuring PGA Tour athletes. This guide will walk you through several of the key concepts required to get playing.

Well first and foremost, I think Reignmakers is a lot of fun! There are several brand-new concepts that make the game uniquely challenging and highly differentiated from any other skill-based contests in the sports marketplace today. If you’re familiar with fantasy sports or DFS, the mechanics of how the Reignmakers PGA Tour contests operate will be quite familiar, but getting to the point of entering a contest is a bit different from other types of games. The three concepts that I’d like to focus on today are player cards, marketplace dynamics, and rarity tiers, because those are the three most dynamic concepts in the game, in my opinion.

The most fundamental gameplay mechanic is that you acquire player cards, via either packs of cards or on the secondary market, and then enter those Player Cards in contests with guaranteed levels of prizing throughout the PGA Tour Season. There are no fees to enter the contests; simply acquiring the player cards is your “entry fee” for the contests. This is important, so it bears repeating: If you acquire player cards, you can enter them in real-money prizing contests for free. There are more details to learn around the mechanics of gameplay, particularly around rarity tiers, so let’s talk about that now.

There are five tiers of rarity for PGA Tour Reignmakers player cards, and I personally think of rarity tiers as a mechanism to spend more, in exchange for higher potential prizes and lower competition. Through the course of the Reignmakers NFL Season, one thing was clear in the contests:

1. The rarer the tier of play, the more expensive it will be for you to acquire golfer cards. There are only 10 “copies” of each golfer at the Reignmaker Tier, so the top golfers may command prices in the high single-digit thousands of dollars, or more if they are performing well.
2. Because it costs more to play at higher rarity tiers, less people play at higher tiers. This is somewhat self-explanatory, but less people play the more it costs to play.
3. When there are less entries in a contest, you are less likely to need the perfect lineup to do well. This isn’t a rule, but it’s often likely that the Reignmaker Tier (most rare, highest cost) will have a lower total point count in first than the Core Tier (least rare, lowest cost/free).

The Reignmakers PGA Tour secondary market is where you can acquire Golfer Cards directly from other DraftKings players. You can also list your Golfer Cards for sale at a price of your choosing. This secondary market is one of the most fascinating, and I think fun, aspects of the DraftKings Reignmakers game. With all Reignmakers PGA Tour cards issued to date, they are valid for the remainder of the calendar year, so when you buy player cards on the secondary market (or receive them via packs, for that matter), you can use them to enter contests for free for dozens of weeks’ worth of contests.

Unlike in DFS, however, the first step in Reignmakers is acquiring the cards, so that’s where your understanding of the athletes and the sport comes into play. You can acquire season-long players in PGA, and then use them to enter contests for free, with a shot at winning a share of the $11 million in cash prizes. One of the keys to the game then, is building a strategy for acquiring players on the secondary market. The price of a player card on the secondary market is a factor, in my opinion, of (mainly) three key things: Rarity Tier, Athlete Quality and Schedule, and Serial Number.

As we’ve discussed, the least rare is least expensive (Core), and the rarest is the most expensive (Reignmaker). Here are the tiers, as well as the cost of the cheapest Scottie Sheffler (the winner of THE PLAYERS Championship), as of press time:

• Core (least rare): $44.99
• Rare: $400.00
• Elite: $1,950
• Legendary: $6,250
• Reignmaker (most rare): None for sale

This is where your opinions and expertise can help you differentiate from other players, whether your strategy is to find players you think are undervalued, or to acquire only who you think is the best, or some combination of the two. The player secondary market is dynamic, and never closes. In the NFL Reignmakers season, good deals could be had, particularly as injuries unfolded in real-time, as the next man up in the NFL team depth chart would often skyrocket in price as his chances for increased fantasy production went up. While Reignmakers PGA Tour might not have some of that dynamicism, you can still definitely make market moves based upon breaking news.

The competitions that a PGA golfer is scheduled to compete in matters, too. In the NFL, a player’s card would typically increase in value in the days before the athlete performed in a showdown contest (Monday Night Football, etc). In the PGA, many of the top golfers won’t compete every week, while some golfers may compete every week. Understanding this dynamic at a deep level and making your purchases accordingly to whatever your strategy is in this regard, is a key to success.

The edition number of your card can matter – sometimes. The edition number can be thought of as a serial number of the Golfer. An edition #1 of a PGA Golfer Card is worth more than a #500 of that same PGA Golfer Card. Edition numbers are used to break ties in a contest, where two or more competitors have the exact same lineup. In the event of a tie the sum of your NFT editions numbers will be used as a tiebreaker with the lower edition sum winning the tiebreaker.

The lower the edition number of your card, the higher its value, but how much higher is an unanswered question. In NFL, serial numbers played a big role in chalky lineups for NFL showdown contests. I was once in a 16-way tie in a Legendary Tier contest, where having better edition numbers could’ve placed me higher in the contest. In the core contest at THE PLAYERS Championship, there was a two-way tie for 3rd place. It’s not totally clear in Reignmakers PGA Tour if edition numbers need to be a focus of yours, for me it’s usually a price-dependent decision. If I can have a much better edition number, for say 1-3% more, I’ll usually pay the premium for the lower edition number.

DraftKings has made it very easy and cheap (free!) to get started. Every customer of DraftKings can get a single free Starter Pack with 8 cards, and compete for a share of up to $10k per week in prizing at no cost. Claim your starter pack here.