In all of this March Madness, one site has peaked my interest a bit. It was TweetBracket. TweetBracket is a test application for 140Bets who is building a platform to allow users to make binary selections, have the information tweeted out (optional), and then have it seamlessly track all of your picks against those of your friends. For the NCAA tournament, 140Bets has set-up a demonstration with TweetBracket in which users select which team they think will win, and 140Bets does the rest. To make it interesting, it is providing prizes like HDTVs and a trip to the 2011 Final Four.
Daily and simple fantasy sports are one of the larger growth markets in the fantasy industry right now(Fanball and NBC Sports‘ SnapDraft has already paid out over $2M in prizes). 140Bets’ approach is the most interesting, because it is building on top of an established platform like Twitter makes the game easily accessible to millions, easy to play, and could potentially benefit from the viral growth that social networks can have. While TweetBracket is just a technology demonstration, but I like to think that it gives us an idea that there just might be a number of different ways to play fantasy sports in the future.
Other sites, such as FanDuel, are already exploring fantasy games played on Twitter, so TweetBracket is not unique. However, the fact that everything is heavily integrated with Twitter is truly remarkable. TweetBracket players just have to log into their Twitter accounts and they are good to go. That’s a really nice feature. Something more sites need to do (or use Facebook Connect). 140Bets’ games are much more like an extension of Twitter than its own site.
What are your thoughts on the direction that 140Bets is taking?
When ESPN purchased Matthew Berry’s The Talented Mr. Roto, one of its goals was to make Matthew Berry its Mel Kiper Jr. of fantasy sports. From appearing on its NFL pre-games shows, starring in commercials, producing podcasts, and being their go-to guy for fantasy sports, ESPN has fully come through on that promise. Now, ESPN is taking it one step further with the launch of a page for Matthew Berry.
Matthew Berry built his reputation in the industry as The Talented Mr. Roto where he mixed in pop culture and his life with his fantasy advice. The result was a very distinctive and enjoyable style of fantasy baseball writing that stands out in a very saturated market of fantasy advice. Whether you agree with his fantasy advice (Berry does have his fair share of haters), his articles are a very entertaining read. This new page gives him a forum to expand his options as a he further develops his identity.
Since the most recent Tiger Woods news actually pertains to real news and not just the shattering of Tiger’s fantasy life, I thought it actually merited coverage. Tiger Woods announced that he will return to golf to play in the Masters tournament next month. Woods’ much publicized infidelity has made him take a hiatus from the game and seek counseling as he tries to put his personal life back together.
Woods’ impact on fantasy golf is legendary and problematic at the same time. The dominance he has displayed in golf similarly leads to dominance in fantasy golf. The fact that he was gone I think actually increased the competitiveness of fantasy golf as there were now any number of guys who were favorites to win a tournament instead of it just being Tiger versus the rest of the field. While, he has some shown some personal chinks in his moral armor, his golf game is more than likely to be completely intact.
Last year, Tiger also returned to golf after suffering a torn ACL during the 2008 US Open (which he won with that torn ACL). It took him two tournaments to get warmed before he finally won during his third tournament of the season. However, he did finish 17th and 9th in those first two tournaments, so not exactly a poor performance.
All of those fantasy owners that gambled that Woods would be back by the Majors will be very nicely rewarded this fantasy season, as they probably were able to pick-up Woods up at a discount.
If you interested in playing fantasy golf, you may want to check out our Where to Play Fantasy Golf article.
Sometimes, there is truth to a rumor. Yahoo! announced today that it did in fact go shopping and purchased Citizen Sports to further solidify its fantasy sports empire. Citizen Sports Inc is leading developer of fantasy sports games that are built into social networks, such as Facebook. While Yahoo! is clearly the leader in fantasy sports right now, this acquisition of Citizen Sports positions itself way to dominate the emerging social network fantasy sports leagues.
Oddly enough, Citizen Sports Inc started as ProTrade featuring a stock market like fantasy sports game. However, as it saw the emerging potential for social fantasy sports games (and non-fantasy sports games), it quickly adjusted its strategy to making much more traditional fantasy games for the social networks. That shift in strategy appears to have paid off very nicely.
While the official amount of the deal has not been announced, it is rumored that Citizen Sports was purchased for somewhere in the neighborhood of $40 to $50 million. According to Crunchbase, Citizen Sports was funded with at least $10M. While the investors will get a good chunk of that money, the founders will walk away with a fair share of money themselves.
Congratulations to everyone at Citizen Sports on the acquisition and to Yahoo! for another well thought out move.
Prior to the release of Moneyball, Sabermetrics was something of which only serious stat geeks cared about. Moneyball gives you incredible insight as to how Billy Beane managed to put together teams that won no fewer than 87 games from 1999 to 2006 despite having one of the tiniest payrolls in baseball. Michael Lewis was given unlimited behind-the-scenes access to Oakland Athletics’ front office. He details how Billy Beane became a disciple of sabermetrics and began shunning the overly-hyped prospect for guys who knew how to draw a walk.
Now, to call this a fantasy baseball book, might be a stretch. However, for myself personally, it changed how I approached fantasy baseball. I know focused on young pitchers who managed to maintain high strikeout to walk ratios through the minors and avoided the ones who had a lot of hype but never were that did not have the statistics to back it up the hype. When evaluating young hitters, the fact that a player knew how to work a count meant that he was much more likely to adjust to new situation and succeed in the majors.
As a result of the book and Beane’s success, it is common for major league baseball front offices to employ a full-time statistician to evaluate options for general managers, and some even become general managers wonderkids such as Boston’s Theo Epstein.
Moneyball is easily one of the best books written about professional baseball in the last decade and very well may be one of the books that has the longest lasting impact on how major league baseball front offices are run.
After being part of a two-man team that took Mock Draft Central from fantasy obscurity to a necessary feature on every major fantasy site, Geoff Stein is now a Senior Editor at Fanball. I recently got a chance to pepper Geoff with some questions that I help shed some light on this emerging player in the fantasy sports industry.
How did you get involved in fantasy sports?
I drafted my first fantasy football team as a sophomore in high school back in 1999. I went undefeated in the regular season with the likes of Peyton Manning, Marvin Harrison and Tony Gonzalez, but lost in the first-round of the playoffs. I’m still seeking vengeance for that extremely painful loss.
My start in the industry came from applying for a job that was posted on Grand Valley State University’s — go Lakers! — Web site: part-time Fantasy Sports writer. That job would eventually turn into Operations Manager at Mock Draft Central.
What’s your reaction when you read your old columns?
It’s been a while since I’ve read some of my older stuff, but I’m always shocked about how far I’ve come as a writer when I do. Not too bad for a broadcasting major who only took one writing class in school. I’ve learned from many talented folks, though, most notably my good friend Herbie Teope, who I credit for a lot of my growth.
How has your fantasy advice evolved since you started?
Instead of telling people what they should do, I try to present information to allow them to form their own opinion. Fanball offers a Live Advice option that allows me to chat with users that have questions; the first thing that I always ask is, “what do you think you should do?”
What’s been your favorite part about becoming a fantasy football expert?
Definitely just watching how the game has grown. When I first started in the industry, most people didn’t have a clue what I was talking about when I told them what I did … mostly just shook their heads while thinking, “I wonder when he’s going to get a real job?” Now, a lot are stunned when I tell them that I make my living in the fantasy sports industry. It’s a good gig.
What is the worst move you ever made as a fantasy owner?
No single move sticks out as being horribly awful, but I’ve trusted in a lot of turds over the years who have killed a lot of teams. The most recent memory involves Francisco Liriano on almost all of my squads
last season. While I think he may finally be “right” again in 2010, I can never muster up the courage to click the “Draft” button next to his name when I’m on the clock.
Tell us about your new role at Fanball. Also, what made you want to leave your previous gig?
I consider myself to be Fanball’s Mark McLemore — super utility man. In my two months with the company, I’ve done it all: writing for both the online Owner’s Edge product and magazines for the upcoming Fantasy Baseball season and NFL Draft; I’ve sat in on tech meetings and helped a fine technical team put together drafting software for the National Fantasy Baseball Championship (NFBC); and a lot of my time has been spent helping with various NFBC festivities. There is also more in the works that I am really excited to be a part of.
Moving to Fanball seemed like the next natural step in my professional career, and the change in ownership at MDC made it the perfect time to do so. I always respected the work that Ryan Houston, Charlie Wiegert, Greg Ambrosius, and Tom Kessenich have done, so getting a chance to learn from them was just too much to pass up. I’ve quickly learned that the entire Fanball operation is first-class with many quality people, and have no doubts that the decision to join their fine team was the correct one.
What do you think is the next big thing in fantasy baseball?
I’m a big fan of the daily and high stakes games — and not just because Fanball offers versions of each. Both games have a way of keeping people interested whether it’s the third week of May or the last week of September.
How do you approach the daily fantasy games differently than you would a regular season-long fantasy game?
Three words about the daily fantasy games: matchup, matchup, matchup. While I think strength of schedule is overrated in games that are played over an entire season, matchups are key to putting together a successful daily squad.
Thanks again to Geoff for the interview, and congratulations on your new position!
This upcoming Friday, the release of the Fantasyland, the film version hits your internet on Snag Films and Hulu. The movie, which is based on Sam Walker’s tale in Fantasyland, (You can read our book review of Fantasyland here), is a documentary featuring Jed Latkin who in 2008 recreated Sam’s steps by first competing in Tout Wars and then travelling around the country to make his fantasy baseball team just that much better every day.
I am seeing a sneak peak of the movie of this week and will have my review for you prior to that. In the mean time, the film has been kind of enough to post some clips online for everyone to check out. The first clip below features Tim Goodman of the San Francisco Chronicle talking about a fantasy league of his featuring some celebrities:
And the second clip features Mike Francesa of WFAN New York talking about why he really hates fantasy:
We you play fantasy sports, you want to play with the best. In fantasy baseball, that is widely considered to be Tout Wars. If you cannot get a spot in Tout Wars, you can always just play by their rules. Right now, you can view the Tout Wars constitution and get a glimpse as to how fantasy sports’ elite fantasy players like to play fantasy baseball.
The highlights of the constitution are that Tout Wars uses an auction format and not a draft, as is probably most common. Plus, Tout Wars utilizes Vickery Free Agent Acquisition Budgets (FAAB) throughout the season. Meaning that teams bid on free agent players throughout the season, as opposed to using free agent dollars.
One of the things fantasy baseball suffers from is a lack of standardization of rules across various leagues. If there was going to be one standard for rules, using Tout Wars’ rules would not be a terrible first step. It is the set of rules that most fantasy experts have in mind when they give fantasy advice.
Major League Baseball Advanced Media will be able to complete its hat-trick of online sports video offerings in a new deal with ESPN. MLB.TV and March Madness On Demand are two of the finest live video offerings on the internet and will now be joined by the 3500 live events streamed by ESPN. The new site will called ESPN3.com, which will be a rebranding of the current ESPN360.com offering. Apparently, technology was a key factor in the decision to use MLBAM, as the previous version of ESPN360 required users to download Microsoft Silverlight.
ESPN360.com became one of my favorite sites this past season as I was able to watch numerous USC Trojan football games online. Since ESPN/ABC has a contract for PAC-10 and Big Ten football games, this meant that the out of market college football games were frequently available on ESPN360.com. It is a great product and definitely will be a part of sports viewing in the future.
For MLBAM, this is a major score. MLBAM, which is separately co-owned by the 30 MLB owners and MLB, has been expanding its product offerings and customer base over the last few years. All the while, raking in cash for its stakeholders, who have already received a more than ample return on their initial investment. In 2007, an initial public offering (IPO) of MLBAM stock had the company’s rumored valued at $5B. One can barely fathom what that offering would be now that MLBAM has cemented itself as a leading digital sports company (and many would argue the best).
Also, how is this for irony? The media is going to a professional league for distribution of its offerings. This offering further blurs the line between sports and the media.
Gerry ScottoDiMarco of RotoRank started the discussion. His site utilized a subscription revenue base for the last six years, but is concerned that his subscription base will be flat or decline for the 2010 fantasy baseball season. This is a very common concern for fantasy site owners these days and should at least be considered by most fantasy site owners.
By switching from a pay to a free model, Ed Menendez points out that, “Not only will you have to redesign the game to be more efficient to use less resources when its free costing you time there, but the outlay on hardware and bandwidth will go up.” Free is not always free to create. Free is all about optimizing operations and resources so that they are almost free and that the ad revenue generated is enough to overcome it.
The other item that came up in discussion is the use of the freemium model where it is free to play a fantasy game, but you charge for premium items such as free agent pick-ups. The general consensus from the discussion thread was that niche sites had to include some element of paid subscriptions model in order to survive. Now, if you have the scale of a Yahoo! or ESPN, the ad-supported model definitely is much more achievable and you may be able to forgo any premium aspects.
From fantasy sports business to its unique culture, from industry news to some lighthearted fantasy humor, and even fantasy sports jobs and videos, Fantasy Ethos covers the world of fantasy sports for fantasy players and the fantasy professional.
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In all of this March Madness, one site has peaked my interest a bit. It was TweetBracket. TweetBracket is a test application for 140Bets who is building a platform to allow users to make binary selections, have the information tweeted out (optional), and then have it seamlessly track all of your picks against those of your friends. For the NCAA tournament, 140Bets has set-up a demonstration with TweetBracket in which users select which team they think will win, and 140Bets does the rest. To make it interesting, it is providing prizes like HDTVs and a trip to the 2011 Final Four.
, via our affiliate link (which helps fund this site).
After being part of a two-man team that took 
This upcoming Friday, the release of the 
