Understanding Sports Affiliation
Fenway Park from the Monster Seats. Hit a Home Run with Sports Affiliation.
By Rick Wolf
When building any online business, you need to diversify revenue streams. There are four revenue streams available to all online businesses: programmatic advertising, direct sales/sponsorships, subscriptions, and affiliate marketing, also known as affiliation.
Today, we are going to focus on affiliation.
You probably understand completely what advertising, sponsorship, and subscriptions mean. These things are likely in your everyday online life. You see an ad. You get an upsell to pay for content, services, or any value-added. With affiliation, it is a bit different.
What is affiliation?
Affiliation is a performance-based revenue model where your company earns a commission for promoting a partner company's products or services. Many companies have a core strategy using affiliates to drive their increase in customers. Affiliation will ensure you get paying customers for your marketing spend, as most deals will be as written above, performance-based.
What is sports affiliation?
Of course, your online company can send people to Amazon or Target to create affiliate revenue. Still, in sports, there is an excellent opportunity to send people to companies you know your audience is interested in. If you are running a sports information site, more than 30% of the people visiting your website are fantasy players and/or bet on sports. If you run sites specific to fantasy sports or sports betting, that number is 100%. Therefore, there is a direct correlation between those visiting your site and their desire for offers for sports betting and fantasy sports operators, services, and products.
Many companies focus on driving traffic and creating subscriptions for sports, and leave affiliation behind. There is a lot of revenue available for sports companies with some work and some technology. Here are some things you need to know to size how much revenue you can make from sports affiliation:
Google News access - the first important thing to answer is whether your brand is in Google News. If you are, you have a huge leg up in driving an audience to affiliate partners and generating customers for them, thereby generating revenue for your company.
Domain Authority - What does that mean? Domain authority refers to how Google and other search engines evaluate your URL. This is more art than science, but the length of time you have been on the active URL with the same link structure aids in making the authority higher. Google wants to be sure you are not spoofing them.
Traffic - How many unique users and page views per month does your URL generate? What is the size and engagement of your audience? Important to understand.
Now, once you have those answers, it's time to assess what is next. Of course, we want you to hire GameDay to work with you through all the ins and outs and maximize the revenues.
What we would do for you, and of course, you can do it on your own:
Model - Create a model for the audience, including potential / expected revenue, as well as costs.
Create a foundation of evergreen content - your brand needs to become a leader in the search world in the areas you are affiliated with.
Install Affiliate Management Technology - Politely collecting information about your audience and putting only offers they WANT to see is the key to success. For sports affiliation, geo-targeting is the most essential component. You don’t want to put a sports betting offer in front of someone from California. GameDay has a license to software that integrates with all websites, geo-targets, and displays offers in a priority order set by your team, delivering them once.
Create partnerships - GameDay has a partnership with a company that provides links for sports affiliation. Our partner can negotiate higher rates as they have a conglomerate of sites to distribute links and gain customers for their partners. You can make direct deals on top of those to integrate into the system.
Reporting - If partners are not skilled at reporting, you need to adjust their priority accordingly. Understanding the journey can help you adapt and make a place for your audience to be happy.
Revenues - Getting paid promptly is critical to spending to create more revenues. Make sure that reporting and revenues are reconciled monthly.
Getting Started
Once begun, half done. As you see above, it is a matter of planning and then getting going. Remember, you can decide what offers to put in front of your audience so you can start slowly. Consider a survey or a poll to see what offers your audience WANTS - making them part of the process will help you succeed without alienating them with a flood of offers they don’t covet.
So, what are you waiting for? Write to getstarted@gameday.com today!
Now Hiring: Junior Full Stack Developer
About Game Day Sports Network
Game Day Sports Network is a premier digital media company specializing in fantasy sports and sports betting. Founded by industry leaders Ed Bunnell and Rick Wolf, the company is dedicated to providing innovative product and technology services to sports media companies. With a focus on enhancing fan engagement, spurring innovation and driving revenue streams, Game Day Sports Network offers business, marketing and growth planning plus product development, and comprehensive business solutions tailored to the evolving needs of the sports media landscape.
What You’ll Do
As a Junior Full Stack Developer, you’ll be helping to build and launch new features, fix bugs, and learn fast, working on real products that users rely on.
Here’s what your week might look like:
Help build and maintain web and mobile features
Assist in building APIs and backend services.
Test and debug applications across platforms.
Collaborate with designers, senior devs, and product folks to bring ideas to life.
Learn best practices, ask questions, and grow your skillset.
Tech You’ll Work With
Don’t worry if you haven’t used all of these—we’re here to help you learn!
Frontend: Vue JS, Custom Web Elements, HTML, CSS
Backend: PHP, GO, Laravel
Mobile: Swift, Kotlin
Databases: MYSQL, Maria DB, Redis
Tools: GitHub, Slack, Postman, Docker, Figma
What You Bring
1-2 years of experience (or equivalent projects/personal work)
Some exposure to both frontend and backend development
Familiarity with web technologies
A willingness to learn mobile dev (Flutter, or native)
Basic understanding of how APIs and databases work
A strong interest in sports and/or sports technology
Self-starter attitude—you’re curious, motivated, and ready to grow.
What You’ll Get
Remote-first work environment
Flexible hours – work when you’re most productive.
Supportive team and mentorship from senior developers
Opportunity to work on real products used by real users
Competitive pay with growth potential
Fun, collaborative, no-BS team culture
Occasional access to live sports events, tools, and insider experiences
Contact careers@gamedaysn.com to apply
Now Hiring: Senior Full Stack Programmer
About Game Day Sports Network
Game Day Sports Network is a premier digital media company specializing in fantasy sports and sports betting. Founded by industry leaders Ed Bunnell and Rick Wolf, the company is dedicated to providing innovative product and technology services to sports media companies. With a focus on enhancing fan engagement, spurring innovation and driving revenue streams, Game Day Sports Network offers business, marketing and growth planning plus product development, and comprehensive business solutions tailored to the evolving needs of the sports media landscape.
What You’ll Do
We’re seeking a Senior Full Stack Programmer to help design and create a wide range of solutions from web and mobile applications to platforms for user generated content. You’ll work closely with a team of dedicated designers, project managers and stakeholders to make sure that all of our products are delivered on time.
Here’s a taste of what you’ll be doing:
Build full-stack apps from scratch
Own features end-to-end—from architecture to deployment
Work closely with product and design to turn ideas into smooth, user-friendly experiences.
Collaborate with other developers and mentor junior engineers.
Integrate with sports data APIs, video streams, payments, and more.
Help shape technical decisions and push the boundaries of what our apps can do.
Deploy, monitor, and improve performance at scale.
Tech We Use
You don’t need to know all of these, but you should be fluent in a few and eager to pick up the rest:
Frontend: Vue JS
Backend: PHP, GO, Laravel
Mobile: Swift, Kotlin
Cloud/Infra: AWS, Github, Jenkins
Databases: MYSQL, Maria DB, Redis
Dev Tools: GitHub, Slack, Postman, Docker, Figma
What We’re Looking For
5+ years of experience building full-stack apps
Proven experience with both web and/or mobile development
Solid backend experience with creating highly available and reliable applications
A working knowledge of cloud technologies for deployment and scalability
Startup mindset: you like to move fast, learn fast, and solve real problems
Bonus: Experience working with a modern payments solution, ie Stripe, Paypal, Braintree
Bonus: experience in sports tech, live data, or fan engagement apps
Bonus: you’ve launched stuff into the real world and can show it off
Perks & Culture
Remote-first team, work from anywhere
Flexible hours – we care more about results than clock-ins
Competitive salary + equity options
Work on cool stuff with people who love sports and tech
Tickets and access to sports events when possible
Startup culture with lots of room to grow, contribute, and lead
Contact careers@gamedaysn.com to apply
Game Day Sports Network Launches
To solve the sports digital media problem of hitting technology and product deadlines, industry stalwarts Rick Wolf and Ed Bunnell launched GameDay Sports Network.
Mission to Drive Fantasy Sports and Sports Betting Revenues for Sports Media Companies
Sleepy Hollow, NY | April 15, 2025 08:00 AM, Eastern
Industry veterans Ed Bunnell and Rick Wolf proudly announce the launch of Game Day Sports Network, a cutting-edge digital media company dedicated to transforming the landscape of fantasy sports and sports betting for sports media companies. Leveraging decades of combined experience, the duo aims to provide unparalleled product and technology services to sports media companies, enhancing fan engagement and driving innovation.
Ed Bunnell, serving as CEO, brings a wealth of expertise from his tenure at renowned organizations such as FOX Sports, Electronic Arts, and CBS SportsLine. At FOX Sports, Bunnell led digital content strategies that significantly boosted fan interaction. His time at Electronic Arts saw him contribute to groundbreaking sports gaming experiences, while at CBS SportsLine, he played a pivotal role in developing early fantasy sports platforms that set industry standards.
Rick Wolf, assuming the role of President, is a celebrated figure in the fantasy sports industry. As the Founder and President of Full Moon Sports since 2001, Wolf has provided strategic solutions to prominent clients, including CBS Sports, Daily Racing Form, Sports Illustrated, Allstar Stats, Rotoworld, NBC Sports, and Fantasy Alarm. Wolf's contributions have been recognized with inductions into both the Fantasy Sports Hall of Fame in 2011 and the Fantasy Sports Writers Association Hall of Fame in 2025.
"With the rapid economic disruption of the sports media landscape, there's a pressing need for innovative solutions that captivate, engage audiences and drive revenues for sports media partners," said Ed Bunnell, CEO of Game Day Sports Network. "Our mission is to empower sports media companies with state-of-the-art products and technologies that not only enhance user experience but also drive geometric growth and profitability."
Rick Wolf, President of Game Day Sports Network, added, "Ed and I have collaborated extensively over the years, and our shared vision for the future of sports media has culminated in the creation of this company. We are committed to delivering top-tier services that allow us to create dynamic partnerships and that lead the next generation of business digital strategy in the sports industry."
For more information about Game Day Sports Network and its services, please visit www.gamedaysn.com.