Your fantasy league can draft with Rex Ryan on a Tulum beach this August

Former NFL head coach Rex Ryan will host a fantasy football draft getaway at La Zebra, a beachfront hotel in Tulum, from August 27 to 31, the property announced Thursday.

The event, billed as The Draft at La Zebra, is aimed at fantasy leagues willing to fly the whole group to the Caribbean for draft weekend instead of gathering in someone's living room. Ryan, who coached the New York Jets and Buffalo Bills before moving to ESPN's studio desk, will run the room.

For Tulum, the date is the story as much as the name. The event lands in the final week of August, one of the slowest stretches of the local tourism calendar, and it arrives with the state's top tourism official publicly attached to the launch.

Rex Ryan, from the Jets sideline to the sand

Ryan coached the Jets from 2009 to 2014, reaching the AFC championship game in each of his first two seasons, and led the Bills in 2015 and 2016. Since leaving the sideline, he has worked as a football analyst at ESPN, where his loud, needle-moving style made him one of the network's most recognizable voices. The hotel's announcement leans directly on that persona, promising his "bold, tactical insight" to walk leagues through their draft preparations.

"By bringing your draft to Tulum, you're turning a standard meeting into a legendary getaway," said Paul Cohen, chief executive of Colibri Boutique Hotels, the group that operates La Zebra. He called it, with a promoter's confidence, "the most memorable draft any league has ever experienced."

The property says the event continues its run of hosting NFL and NCAA figures, part of a deliberate push into sports travel bookings.

What a fantasy football draft in Tulum includes

The packages are built around the draft itself, held on the beach, with the rest of the stay wrapped around it. Attendees get access to what La Zebra describes as Tulum's largest beachfront sports bar for game viewing and post-draft celebrations, along with the hotel's beach club, spa and wellness programming. Golf is part of the pitch too, with play arranged at the PGA Riviera Maya course nearby. Rooms range from beachfront and sea view categories to garden and jungle rooms.

The announcement does not include pricing. Draft packages, programming and booking details are listed on the hotel's website. The event is sponsored by EssentiallySports, a sports media platform, and Visit Tulum, the destination's tourism promotion body.

The tourism secretary lends his name

"We are delighted to host this prestigious fantasy football event in the heart of the Mexican Caribbean," said Bernardo Cueto Riestra, Quintana Roo's secretary of tourism, in the announcement. Bringing "an iconic figure like Rex Ryan" to Tulum, he said, "highlights our commitment to attracting world-class experiences that showcase the very best of Quintana Roo."

The state has spent the past two years courting exactly this kind of group trip. Tulum's international airport, opened in December 2023, now receives direct flights from several U.S. cities, which turns a ten-person league weekend from a logistical headache into a single booking. A room block of football fans arriving in late August is the kind of business that infrastructure was built to capture.

Draft season meets low season

Most fantasy leagues hold their drafts in the last two weeks of August, days before the NFL season opens in early September. The audience is enormous. The Fantasy Sports and Gaming Association has estimated that more than 60 million people in the United States and Canada play fantasy sports, and draft night is the one date on the calendar when an entire league shows up.

Late August in the Riviera Maya sits deep in hurricane season, when occupancy dips and hotels chase group business hardest. An event that fills beachfront rooms that specific week solves a real problem for the property, whatever it does for anyone's roster.

Booking opens through the hotel's site at lazebrahotels.com/sports. The first draft boards go up on the sand August 27.

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