The daily fantasy sport contest format continues to grow in both customers as well as companies providing the product. With the growth of this product also came the claims from various quarters that these games weren't legal or at the least took advantage of some "loophole." These barbs were typically provided by competitors not providing these games, or online gaming providers shut out of the US market, or typical naysayers who didn't like fantasy sports in the first place and had some other axe to grind or ulterior motive.
Regardless, the daily fantasy sports game market is growing such that revenues from this segment is on the order of one-third of the yearly $1.6 billion spent on fantasy sports - not insignificant money. An article that tries again to stir the pot and create the appearance of uncertainty of the legality of daily fantasy sports games can be found here.
Daily fantasy games have threats, but in my view they are not from the legal front, but from the competitive front. The threats come in two ways. The first is from the current large fantasy operators like CBS, Fox, ESPN, Yahoo, etc. These operators currently focus on the season-long contests but don't have any barriers to keep them from offering daily games. Once they do, the current leaders in this segment may lose significant market share and quite possibly be run out of the market. The current daily game operators should keep looking over their shoulder because the big boys could enter this market whenever they want.
The other competitive front is from new entrants with an even newer and superior short-term fantasy sports game. Current daily games generally have prize to entry fee ratios somewhat less than 2 to 1. So for a $10 entry fee game, the winner will win somewhere around $18, where the game operator keeps $2 for their expenses and profit. The new daily game contest format can offer games that have prize to entry fee ratios as high as 100 to 1, or for a $10 entry fee game, could offer a prize as high as $1,000. Since this game concept is patented, it can't be copied and the current daily game operators will have no easy counter to this superior product. If you were a customer and for $10 could play two $5 games, each game having a chance to win up to $500, what game would you think they would play? Right, a no brainer.
The daily game segment will continue to grow and is on the cusp of some very disruptive change.
Showing posts with label fantasy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label fantasy. Show all posts
Monday, October 21, 2013
Tuesday, December 28, 2010
Life-Changing Payouts From Fantasy Sports
Many people's only involvement with fantasy sports is with free games or low stakes entry fee games. However, don't think that there isn't big money to be won playing fantasy sports. This is true even though fantasy sports is not gambling. Yes, NOT gambling. People can bet on sports but playing in a fantasy sports contest is not gambling.
What makes fantasy sports different from typical sports betting is how fantasy sports contests operate. In a nutshell, fantasy sports games operate as contests. These contests can either be free or pay-to-play. We'll discuss the pay-to-play as one of the generally accepted elements for gambling isn't met - consideration.
To be gambling, typically an activity needs all three elements - prize, consideration and chance. For the free to play games, if there is no cost to enter, then there isn't any consideration and therefore it's not gambling. So, isn't pay-to-play then gambling because there's consideration? Not necessarily because of the element of chance. Fantasy sports generally is viewed as a skill game. Generally, because states can have different interpretations of what constitutes chance. Overall, in about 41 of the 50 states, fantasy sports are viewed as a game of skill rather than chance.
In the UIGEA, fantasy sports contests are defined as a game of skill and exempt from internet gambling restrictions if they operate within certain guidelines. Basically, you can't have a fantasy team be 100% of a real team, you have to explicitly state your prize structure and levels and not have them vary with the number of game participants, and the real-world games used as basis of games should be more than just a single game.
As stated at the beginning of the post, most people only deal with free games or games with low stakes and prizes. But there are some life-changing payouts out there playing fantasy sports, even in a contest format.
From the Fantasy Sports Business blog, they list a few of the high-stakes fantasy sports contests and top payout levels:
World Championship of Fantasy Football - $300,000
RapidDraft.com - $100,000
Footballguys Players Championship - $100,000
Fantasy Football Players Championship - $100,000
National Fantasy Football Championship - $100,000
So, the top prizes for these five non-gambling fantasy football contests total $700,000. Life changing payouts for playing fantasy football and getting to watch LOTS of NFL games! How cool is that?
What makes fantasy sports different from typical sports betting is how fantasy sports contests operate. In a nutshell, fantasy sports games operate as contests. These contests can either be free or pay-to-play. We'll discuss the pay-to-play as one of the generally accepted elements for gambling isn't met - consideration.
To be gambling, typically an activity needs all three elements - prize, consideration and chance. For the free to play games, if there is no cost to enter, then there isn't any consideration and therefore it's not gambling. So, isn't pay-to-play then gambling because there's consideration? Not necessarily because of the element of chance. Fantasy sports generally is viewed as a skill game. Generally, because states can have different interpretations of what constitutes chance. Overall, in about 41 of the 50 states, fantasy sports are viewed as a game of skill rather than chance.
In the UIGEA, fantasy sports contests are defined as a game of skill and exempt from internet gambling restrictions if they operate within certain guidelines. Basically, you can't have a fantasy team be 100% of a real team, you have to explicitly state your prize structure and levels and not have them vary with the number of game participants, and the real-world games used as basis of games should be more than just a single game.
As stated at the beginning of the post, most people only deal with free games or games with low stakes and prizes. But there are some life-changing payouts out there playing fantasy sports, even in a contest format.
From the Fantasy Sports Business blog, they list a few of the high-stakes fantasy sports contests and top payout levels:
World Championship of Fantasy Football - $300,000
RapidDraft.com - $100,000
Footballguys Players Championship - $100,000
Fantasy Football Players Championship - $100,000
National Fantasy Football Championship - $100,000
So, the top prizes for these five non-gambling fantasy football contests total $700,000. Life changing payouts for playing fantasy football and getting to watch LOTS of NFL games! How cool is that?
Tuesday, July 27, 2010
Would This Be an Indicator of the Most Accurate Fantasy Football Prognosticator?
Over the last couple of years, I've done a few posts regarding fantasy football projections, which you can see here. here. here and here. I have a pretty strong bias that fantasy football magazines aren't significantly more accurate than just predicting what happened last year would happen this year (at least for quarterbacks). Do I buy fantasy football magazines? Of course! Hey, it's fantasy football season! Now I do recognize that I am paying for historical information and a nice paper-based reference. I am not paying $7.95 for rare insight. Nowadays you can get pretty good fantasy info for free.
With regard to accuracy, I've been thinking of what indicator could be a good "tell" that the magazine or publisher might have more on the ball than the competition. Yes, being accurate in every player and position is the objective, but if you could choose just one position and if that accuracy was good, could it be an indicator? I've got an idea here that I will share and you can determine if it has any merit.
I'm thinking that the fantasy prognosticator that does the best with regard to projecting kickers is likely to be accurate with the other positions as well. The reason I say this is that the kicker generally participates in every scoring drive, offensive or defensive. Of course, kickers on good offensive teams will likely score more points, but would they score the most kicker points? Maybe not.
For example, if Kicker 1 on a good team and Kicker 2 on a not so good team are playing each other this week. Team 1 beats Team 2 28-16. Kicker 1 scores 4 extra points or 4 points. Kicker 2 gets 3 field goals and 1 extra point or 10 points. See? Kicker 2 generates more fantasy points.
If a prognosticator gets kicker rankings (and maybe even point projections) correct, they are likely to get other position rankings correct. If they can determine that a kicker is going to get a good number of field goal opportunities but not extra points, that will help paint the picture with regard to quarterback, receiver and running back stats for that team as well. Get the kickers right, and the other positions will follow suit.
That's what I am going to look at this year. I am going to do a follow-up post to lay out a few fantasy football magazines and their Top 15 kickers. We'll see how accurate they are.
With regard to accuracy, I've been thinking of what indicator could be a good "tell" that the magazine or publisher might have more on the ball than the competition. Yes, being accurate in every player and position is the objective, but if you could choose just one position and if that accuracy was good, could it be an indicator? I've got an idea here that I will share and you can determine if it has any merit.
I'm thinking that the fantasy prognosticator that does the best with regard to projecting kickers is likely to be accurate with the other positions as well. The reason I say this is that the kicker generally participates in every scoring drive, offensive or defensive. Of course, kickers on good offensive teams will likely score more points, but would they score the most kicker points? Maybe not.
For example, if Kicker 1 on a good team and Kicker 2 on a not so good team are playing each other this week. Team 1 beats Team 2 28-16. Kicker 1 scores 4 extra points or 4 points. Kicker 2 gets 3 field goals and 1 extra point or 10 points. See? Kicker 2 generates more fantasy points.
If a prognosticator gets kicker rankings (and maybe even point projections) correct, they are likely to get other position rankings correct. If they can determine that a kicker is going to get a good number of field goal opportunities but not extra points, that will help paint the picture with regard to quarterback, receiver and running back stats for that team as well. Get the kickers right, and the other positions will follow suit.
That's what I am going to look at this year. I am going to do a follow-up post to lay out a few fantasy football magazines and their Top 15 kickers. We'll see how accurate they are.
Sunday, July 11, 2010
Fantasy Sports a Recession-Proof Industry
The Huffington Post, of all sources, had a story this week listing ten recession-proof industries. Fantasy sports was one of them. The article is correct. Fantasy sports is a great fit for a recession-proof industry. Why, you ask? Here's why:
In tough economic times, entertainment is a great escape. Movies did exceptionally well during the Depression - so did sports. Of course there are more entertainment options today given the advances in gaming. Sports is just as popular as ever. What fantasy sports adds is the ability to allow the fan to utilize their skill to prognosticate performance of sports players and to pit those skills against others for bragging rights and even cash prizes. With the poor economy, the ability to get some additional cash is just a sweetener. Fantasy sports adds a bonus to the entertainment and escape value of sports.
There are fantasy games for just about every sport available. Football, baseball, basketball, hockey, golf, auto racing - even fishing have fantasy games. Research from the Fantasy Sports Trade Association estimate almost 30 million Americans play fantasy sports.
In these tough economic times, fantasy sports is something that can expand the entertainment value of sports viewership, extending the involvement of the fan to cover the entire week. That is a very good value.
In tough economic times, entertainment is a great escape. Movies did exceptionally well during the Depression - so did sports. Of course there are more entertainment options today given the advances in gaming. Sports is just as popular as ever. What fantasy sports adds is the ability to allow the fan to utilize their skill to prognosticate performance of sports players and to pit those skills against others for bragging rights and even cash prizes. With the poor economy, the ability to get some additional cash is just a sweetener. Fantasy sports adds a bonus to the entertainment and escape value of sports.
There are fantasy games for just about every sport available. Football, baseball, basketball, hockey, golf, auto racing - even fishing have fantasy games. Research from the Fantasy Sports Trade Association estimate almost 30 million Americans play fantasy sports.
In these tough economic times, fantasy sports is something that can expand the entertainment value of sports viewership, extending the involvement of the fan to cover the entire week. That is a very good value.
Monday, March 29, 2010
2009 Fantasy Football QB Prediction Results
In a previous post, I provided some fantasy football QB rankings and compared them to a couple of fantasy football magazines. The intent was to test the hypothesis that basically saying what happened last year would happen this year wasn't radically different from the "deep analysis" provided by fantasy football information sources, which you need to pay for. To recap the methodology stated in last year's post:
"I will take last year's QB rankings and use the premise that the rankings from last year will be the same as this year. There will be a couple of adjustments. If for example, a QB moves from one team to the other and will be the starter, I'll keep that QB at the same ranking, even though they changed teams. QBs coming back from injury will be replaced with the highest rank position from the best of their replacements (i.e. Brady for Cassel). They will be projected at the ranking level that their substitute had last year. Finally, I put in Mark Sanchez in the slot held by Gus Frerotte (#29). Frerotte is not in the league at this point and Favre is now in Minnesota.
Could that cause some inaccuracy? Yes, but to keep the level of my "expert analysis" to a minimum, I'll keep the adjustments paltry and simplistic. You will also see by doing this just the few instances where you can intuitively (i.e. for free) make your own adjustment and not pay $7.99 to read something you basically already know. I made one adjustment to be fair to the magazines, dealing with Brett Favre. They didn't have him in their top rankings so I assumed that they would placed Favre in the position of the top rated Minnesota QB (#27). "
"The stats were based on total performance (passing and rushing), not just TDs. The league I was in counted passing TDs for 3 pts instead of 6 pts, so QBs that maybe didn't pass as well but got some stats rushing may show up higher in this list than the rankings your league has. The ranking lists of the magazines also were based on a performance model, not just TDs, to keep the comparison consistent."
Here's the results for my projections and fantasy football magazines A and B (names omitted):
YouGaming Blog
Correct within 5 or less spots - 12 (40%)
Correct within 10 or less spots - 21 (70%)
Incorrect by 11 or more spots - 9 (30%)
Fantasy Football Magazine A
Correct within 5 or less spots - 15 (50%)
Correct within 10 or less spots - 24 (80%)
Incorrect by 11 or more spots - 6 (20%)
Fantasy Football Magazine B
Correct within 5 or less spots - 18 (60%)
Correct within 10 or less spots - 23 (77%)
Incorrect by 11 0r more spots - 7 (23%)
The fantasy football magazines were able to beat the performance of simply stating what happened last year would happen this year, but not by very much. Overall results to get rankings within 10 spots is pretty much the same. So, at least compared to the magazines considered, you could have simply taken last year's QB stats rankings as your cheat sheet and likely not done much worse. What this analysis doesn't take into account is the actual numbers produced by the quarterbacks. It could be that even though a QB is off by several spots in ranking, the actual difference in performance stats may not be drastically different, particularly after you get past the top tier of quarterbacks.
What is fairly consistent but not reported in detail is that after the top 20 quarterbacks, no one did very well in terms of accuracy. If a prognosticator could do a very good job of predicting quarterback rankings from 15 to 30, that would be a great value as often those players would be your bye week QB or your QB that can keep your team solid if your top QB on your roster has a nagging injury or a tough weekly matchup.
I may consider this year looking at actual projected stats to see how well the fantasy football magazines do in that area.
"I will take last year's QB rankings and use the premise that the rankings from last year will be the same as this year. There will be a couple of adjustments. If for example, a QB moves from one team to the other and will be the starter, I'll keep that QB at the same ranking, even though they changed teams. QBs coming back from injury will be replaced with the highest rank position from the best of their replacements (i.e. Brady for Cassel). They will be projected at the ranking level that their substitute had last year. Finally, I put in Mark Sanchez in the slot held by Gus Frerotte (#29). Frerotte is not in the league at this point and Favre is now in Minnesota.
Could that cause some inaccuracy? Yes, but to keep the level of my "expert analysis" to a minimum, I'll keep the adjustments paltry and simplistic. You will also see by doing this just the few instances where you can intuitively (i.e. for free) make your own adjustment and not pay $7.99 to read something you basically already know. I made one adjustment to be fair to the magazines, dealing with Brett Favre. They didn't have him in their top rankings so I assumed that they would placed Favre in the position of the top rated Minnesota QB (#27). "
"The stats were based on total performance (passing and rushing), not just TDs. The league I was in counted passing TDs for 3 pts instead of 6 pts, so QBs that maybe didn't pass as well but got some stats rushing may show up higher in this list than the rankings your league has. The ranking lists of the magazines also were based on a performance model, not just TDs, to keep the comparison consistent."
Here's the results for my projections and fantasy football magazines A and B (names omitted):
YouGaming Blog
Correct within 5 or less spots - 12 (40%)
Correct within 10 or less spots - 21 (70%)
Incorrect by 11 or more spots - 9 (30%)
Fantasy Football Magazine A
Correct within 5 or less spots - 15 (50%)
Correct within 10 or less spots - 24 (80%)
Incorrect by 11 or more spots - 6 (20%)
Fantasy Football Magazine B
Correct within 5 or less spots - 18 (60%)
Correct within 10 or less spots - 23 (77%)
Incorrect by 11 0r more spots - 7 (23%)
The fantasy football magazines were able to beat the performance of simply stating what happened last year would happen this year, but not by very much. Overall results to get rankings within 10 spots is pretty much the same. So, at least compared to the magazines considered, you could have simply taken last year's QB stats rankings as your cheat sheet and likely not done much worse. What this analysis doesn't take into account is the actual numbers produced by the quarterbacks. It could be that even though a QB is off by several spots in ranking, the actual difference in performance stats may not be drastically different, particularly after you get past the top tier of quarterbacks.
What is fairly consistent but not reported in detail is that after the top 20 quarterbacks, no one did very well in terms of accuracy. If a prognosticator could do a very good job of predicting quarterback rankings from 15 to 30, that would be a great value as often those players would be your bye week QB or your QB that can keep your team solid if your top QB on your roster has a nagging injury or a tough weekly matchup.
I may consider this year looking at actual projected stats to see how well the fantasy football magazines do in that area.
Saturday, April 11, 2009
Delaware Sports Betting Bill Progressing
The legislation to authorize sports betting in Delaware passed a legislative hurdle this week. The Delaware House Gaming and Parimutuels Committee released the bill from their committee this week. Certain gaming interests, the NCAA, NFL and anti-gambling interests had been against expanding sports gambling, but the State's need for revenue to relieve a projected shortfall outweighed the special interests' lobbying. More detail on the bill can be found in the Forbes.com article.
The bill keeps the number of casinos at three, but increases the tax rate on slot revenue and institutes a $4.5M sports betting license fee, split among the three casinos. I understand the need for revenue, but increases in gaming taxes don't always translate to increased revenue. In addition, it is important that the casinos are able to generate a profit as well. They are the entities that are taking the business risk.
The sports betting license fee is a bit steep. Assuming the win % on sports betting is 5%, the casinos would have to generate $90M in wagers just to cover the license fee. That doesn't take into their costs of betting lines, sports book property, plant and equipment, advertising and labor costs. The sports bets provided had better be attractive in order to generate sufficient wagering interest. If Delaware just sticks to a sports lottery, requiring a parlay of two or more bets, that offering alone may not be sufficient.
Delaware needs to offer the full spectrum of sports wagers, to include the new pari-mutuel fantasy sports wagers. Fantasy sports is big business, and the three Delaware casinos are racetracks as well, very familiar with pari-mutuel wagering. Also, these tracks already have the proper pari-mutuel equipment in place, just requiring minor software modification to allow pari-mutuel fantasy sports wagers. With almost 30M fantasy sports players in the US, there's a large potential market. Since the population base within a 90 minute drive from Delaware is approximately 35M, there may be as many as 3.5M fantasy sports players as an addressable market by Delaware casinos.
With the pari-mutuel concept, the takeout is much higher than that for parlay bets or straight bets. Pari-mutuel takeout percentages are often 18% or higher. Assuming just a 15% takeout,
only $30M in pari-mutuel fantasy sports wagers would be required to generate the $4.5M to cover the annual license fee. Since the significant portion of the pari-mutuel infrastructure is already in place, this concept could be an easy and profitable portion of the overall sports betting offering.
To learn more about pari-mutuel fantasy sports wagering, see the YouGaming.com website.
The bill keeps the number of casinos at three, but increases the tax rate on slot revenue and institutes a $4.5M sports betting license fee, split among the three casinos. I understand the need for revenue, but increases in gaming taxes don't always translate to increased revenue. In addition, it is important that the casinos are able to generate a profit as well. They are the entities that are taking the business risk.
The sports betting license fee is a bit steep. Assuming the win % on sports betting is 5%, the casinos would have to generate $90M in wagers just to cover the license fee. That doesn't take into their costs of betting lines, sports book property, plant and equipment, advertising and labor costs. The sports bets provided had better be attractive in order to generate sufficient wagering interest. If Delaware just sticks to a sports lottery, requiring a parlay of two or more bets, that offering alone may not be sufficient.
Delaware needs to offer the full spectrum of sports wagers, to include the new pari-mutuel fantasy sports wagers. Fantasy sports is big business, and the three Delaware casinos are racetracks as well, very familiar with pari-mutuel wagering. Also, these tracks already have the proper pari-mutuel equipment in place, just requiring minor software modification to allow pari-mutuel fantasy sports wagers. With almost 30M fantasy sports players in the US, there's a large potential market. Since the population base within a 90 minute drive from Delaware is approximately 35M, there may be as many as 3.5M fantasy sports players as an addressable market by Delaware casinos.
With the pari-mutuel concept, the takeout is much higher than that for parlay bets or straight bets. Pari-mutuel takeout percentages are often 18% or higher. Assuming just a 15% takeout,
only $30M in pari-mutuel fantasy sports wagers would be required to generate the $4.5M to cover the annual license fee. Since the significant portion of the pari-mutuel infrastructure is already in place, this concept could be an easy and profitable portion of the overall sports betting offering.
To learn more about pari-mutuel fantasy sports wagering, see the YouGaming.com website.
Wednesday, January 14, 2009
Fantasy Sports Prognosticators Not So Accurate
The 2008 NFL regular season is now over, which also means that for the most part the fantasy football season is over. In a previous post, I mentioned that it would be nice to have some measure of accuracy of player projections.
Now this is not by any means determinative, but I took a few fantasy football magazines I had for this year, and compared their QB projected rankings to how they actually turned out. The stats were based on total performance (passing and rushing), not just TDs. The league I was in counted passing TDs for 3 pts instead of 6 pts, so QBs that maybe didn't pass as well but got some stats rushing may show up higher in this list than the rankings your league has. The ranking lists of the magazines also were based on a performance model, not just TDs, to keep the comparison consistent.
To be fair to the magazines, since I used as my sample what I had on hand, I omitted the actual names of the magazines and list them as A, B and C. The table below shows the fantasy QB rankings at the end of this year's regular season, along with the projected rankings from the 3 fantasy football magazines. Also, I averaged the ranking error for the 3 magazines under the "Variance" column.
Where the QB was not included (ranked too low) in a particular magazine's rankings, I insert an "N/A" and assume a ranking of 50. Magazine A had a longer list of QB rankings compared to magazines B and C.
Here's the results (table is at the end of the post):
On a whim, I wanted to see if the final QB stats ranking for the 2007 season was used, as is, for the 2008 QB stats ranking, how that would measure. For those QBs that ended up ranking too low for measurement in the final 2008 regular season stats, I assumed a ranking of 65. No changes were made to the 2008 projected rankings based on off-season changes. I took the final 2007 regular season rankings verbatim. In other words, Cleo Lemon was projected 25th, Josh McCown was projected 31st, etc. The results are:
I did not look at the other positions, so it is possible QBs have a greater variation but that would have to be verified and I'll leave that to others to research. As of now, here's some evidence that fantasy football magazine projections (crafted by "experts") are not statistically more accurate than just saying what happened last year would happen this year.
Now this is not by any means determinative, but I took a few fantasy football magazines I had for this year, and compared their QB projected rankings to how they actually turned out. The stats were based on total performance (passing and rushing), not just TDs. The league I was in counted passing TDs for 3 pts instead of 6 pts, so QBs that maybe didn't pass as well but got some stats rushing may show up higher in this list than the rankings your league has. The ranking lists of the magazines also were based on a performance model, not just TDs, to keep the comparison consistent.
To be fair to the magazines, since I used as my sample what I had on hand, I omitted the actual names of the magazines and list them as A, B and C. The table below shows the fantasy QB rankings at the end of this year's regular season, along with the projected rankings from the 3 fantasy football magazines. Also, I averaged the ranking error for the 3 magazines under the "Variance" column.
Where the QB was not included (ranked too low) in a particular magazine's rankings, I insert an "N/A" and assume a ranking of 50. Magazine A had a longer list of QB rankings compared to magazines B and C.
Here's the results (table is at the end of the post):
- Correct within 5 or less spots - 10 (31%)
- Correct within 10 or less spots - 13 (40%)
- Incorrect by 11 or more spots - 19 (59%)
- Average ranking error - 15 spots
On a whim, I wanted to see if the final QB stats ranking for the 2007 season was used, as is, for the 2008 QB stats ranking, how that would measure. For those QBs that ended up ranking too low for measurement in the final 2008 regular season stats, I assumed a ranking of 65. No changes were made to the 2008 projected rankings based on off-season changes. I took the final 2007 regular season rankings verbatim. In other words, Cleo Lemon was projected 25th, Josh McCown was projected 31st, etc. The results are:
- Correct within 5 or less spots - 10 (31%)
- Correct within 10 or less spots - 15 (46%)
- Incorrect by 11 or more spots - 17 (53%)
- Average ranking error - 17 spots
I did not look at the other positions, so it is possible QBs have a greater variation but that would have to be verified and I'll leave that to others to research. As of now, here's some evidence that fantasy football magazine projections (crafted by "experts") are not statistically more accurate than just saying what happened last year would happen this year.
| # | QB Name | Mag A | Mag B | Mag C | Variance |
| 1 | Drew Brees | 5 | 4 | 4 | 3 |
| 2 | Aaron Rodgers | 16 | 19 | 19 | 16 |
| 3 | Jay Cutler | 8 | 8 | 8 | 5 |
| 4 | Philip Rivers | 18 | 13 | 13 | 11 |
| 5 | Kurt Warner | 37 | 36 | 36 | 31 |
| 6 | Peyton Manning | 2 | 2 | 2 | 4 |
| 7 | Matt Cassel | 64 | N/A | N/A | 48 |
| 8 | Donovan McNabb | 7 | 6 | 6 | 2 |
| 9 | Tyler Thigpen | N/A | N/A | N/A | 41 |
| 10 | David Garrard | 9 | 15 | 15 | 3 |
| 11 | Chad Pennington | 27 | 30 | 30 | 18 |
| 12 | Tony Romo | 4 | 3 | 3 | 9 |
| 13 | Eli Manning | 13 | 12 | 12 | 1 |
| 14 | Brett Favre | N/A | N/A | 45 | 34 |
| 15 | Matt Ryan | N/A | 34 | 34 | 24 |
| 16 | Jason Campbell | 17 | 25 | 24 | 6 |
| 17 | Kyle Orton | 31 | 38 | 39 | 19 |
| 18 | Joe Flacco | 33 | 37 | 38 | 18 |
| 19 | Ben Roethlisberger | 6 | 7 | 7 | 12 |
| 20 | Jake Delhomme | 21 | 14 | 14 | 4 |
| 21 | Matt Schaub | 12 | 17 | 17 | 6 |
| 22 | Jeff Garcia | 22 | 23 | 23 | 1 |
| 23 | Trent Edwards | 24 | 28 | 28 | 4 |
| 24 | Kerry Collins | 50 | N/A | N/A | 26 |
| 25 | Shaun Hill | 38 | 40 | 40 | 14 |
| 26 | JaMarcus Russell | 26 | 22 | 22 | 3 |
| 27 | Marc Bulger | 15 | 11 | 10 | 15 |
| 28 | Ryan Fitzpatrick | 66 | N/A | N/A | 27 |
| 29 | Gus Frerotte | 45 | N/A | N/A | 19 |
| 30 | Seneca Wallace | 53 | N/A | N/A | 21 |
| 31 | Derek Anderson | 11 | 10 | 11 | 20 |
| 32 | Dan Orlovsky | N/A | N/A | N/A | 18 |
Sunday, August 24, 2008
The Ultimate Fantasy Football Magazine
As discussed in a previous post, this is the time of year where fantasy football touts flood the magazine racks with their wisdom, claiming that they are the gospel leading you to fantasy glory or redemption, as your case may be.
The magazines are basically the same. They offer the same core product content:
The magazines are basically the same. They offer the same core product content:
- How to play
- Fantasy league schedule
- Pro (or college) schedule
- "Experts" picks
- Performance projections/player analysis
- "Cheat sheet"/ranking (for a particular scoring methodology)
- Page to write down your draft selections
- Advertising for other fantasy football offerings
All this for $5.99 - $7.99! (US dollars)
Not to plug a particular vendor, but I did get a copy of Fanball.com's "Just Cheat Sheets." This magazine has player rankings based on about a half a dozen different scoring schemes. It is very light on projections and analysis, but it is true to its word as a cheat sheet publication.
But what if you could combine this with some of the standard fantasy football magazine content? Now, that would likely be something you could see paying $10.00 - $12.00 for. With a magazine like this, you wouldn't need to make sure you had two magazines to refer to during a draft preparation or the draft. One magazine you could roll up and stick in your pocket (assuming you wear cargo pants). That, a pen and highlighter, and you're ready! The only thing you would need to worry about is the accuracy of the projections. Over time, the better prognosticators would (hopefully) be able to document their accuracy.
On a separate topic, I have changed my opinion on experts. At first, I enjoyed looking to see where experts viewed players. Over time, I noticed that generally there were few times where the experts radically disagreed, so just like political pundits, they all say pretty much the same thing. I suppose experts picks can be used to make you feel better if you made an early round choice that fizzled. You could point to the experts and say, "see, they all had this guy going in the second round." Forget experts unless the experts were winners of high-stakes contests where they put up their own money to compete. No more experts where they are merely guys who blog (like me) or work for these same publications they want you to buy. If you laid $1,000 of your good money down and won $100,000, I would be interested in your opinions.
If I was starting up a competing magazine, or wanted to increase my magazine's popularity, I might take a hard look at this format and price point. Having several scoring methodology player rankings helps as not every league operates the same. Make it easy for customers to determine your magazine is a good fit for their league, informational and hopefully entertaining. Charge more than a typical magazine, but less than if you purchased two.
Saturday, February 16, 2008
Degree of Fantasy Game Differentiation Diminishing
The fantasy game model is a game construct where contestants select individuals, sport teams, etc., to form a virtual "team," which is then tracked for certain performance characteristics or news items, which then get converted to a point system for scoring purposes. The contestants attempt to craft a team that can generate the highest score, for either bragging rights or prizes. The fantasy model, typically applied to sports like football and baseball, is expanding to other areas such as politics, soap operas and movies, in addition to expanding to other sports such as fishing. Although this expansion captures more participants, the games themselves operate similarly to traditional fantasy sport contests.
Traditional fantasy games differentiate across these dimensions:
Traditional fantasy games differentiate across these dimensions:
- Stakes/Prizes (free to hundreds of thousands of dollars)
- Player selection (draft, salary cap, auction)
- Scoring methodology (statistics and weightings)
- Competition method (head-to-head, rotisserie, playoff)
- Timeframe (daily, monthly, season, post-season)
What passes now as new and innovative is usually no more than just a minor variant on one of the above dimensions. This is borne out by new research from the Fantasy Sports Trade Association, http://www.fsta.org/, that states that the number of fantasy sport consumers have only increased 7% from 2003-2007. This statistic is more weighted toward the pay-to-play fantasy consumer and is underweighting the free-play fantasy consumer, which is the majority of fantasy players. However, the fantasy consumers that play free games generally are less lucrative to the fantasy operator than those that pay entry fees.
For fantasy operators, particularly new entrants, that want to compete effectively in a relatively crowded and undifferentiated marketplace, game innovation that provides a sustainable competitve advantage is required. Even if the new entrant developed an innovative game concept that proved popular, competitors could easily copy the concept and bring it to market.
Yahoo, ESPN and CBS are the largest fantasy football sites, according to research from the Fantasy Sports Association, http://www.fantasysportsassociation.com/. Fantasy football, by a large margin, is the most popular of the fantasy sports. Each of these competitors has unique users/visitors in the 1.5M to 4.5M range. It would be very difficult for a new entrant, even if the first mover with a differentiated game, to prevail against larger competitors that decided to implement that game if there were no real barrier to entry.
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