For the 2010 fantasy baseball season, Fantasy Sports Vault has released a number of upgrades. Most of the changes revolve around making the sign-up process a little easier and giving leagues additional flexibility. All of these upgrades will enable more leagues to be able to use the service, since fantasy leagues are rarely one-size-fits-all. Once leagues give their money to Fantasy Sports Vault, it makes money by collecting interest on the funds it holds for leagues for the six months of the fantasy baseball season.

One of the site features that I find the most interesting is the league matching bulleting board. The posted leagues are for higher dollar leagues, which are exactly the kind of leagues that will generate the most income for Fantasy Sports Vault. It takes the same amount of effort to manage the funds for a $25 per team league as it does a $250 per team league. This is definitely a great example by Fantasy Sports Vault of knowing its customer and creating a product that enables it to generate additional revenue.

Update (March 2nd, 4:05pm): Ty Cayce of Fantasy Sports Vault has contacted me and corrected me on a point I made about Fantasy Sports Vault. Funds entrusted to Fantasy Sports Vault are in fact held in one of two FDIC-insured holding accounts. Personally that alleviates a lot of concern I had before and would definitely give Fantasy Sports Vault a much more in-depth look as a league commissioner of a personal league.

I will leave the original text below, just so it does not look like I am trying to rewrite history.

On a personal note, I am not sure if I would trust my league’s money with Fantasy Sports Vault and here is why. From Fantasy Sports Vault’s website, it is not clear where the money is being held when I give it to them. Is it just sitting in the site’s bank account? Could it disappear? There is no piece of mind, and that is what the site is really supposed to sell to its customers. In contrast, LeagueSafe, Fantasy Sports Vault’s main competitor, makes it very clear that league funds sit in a FDIC-insured bank account throughout the season. That is a very big difference.