Usually I am not that big a fan of celebrity endorsements, but I think this one was nice and novel. Fantazzle has partnered with the New York Giants’ Steve Smith in a deal that will get Fantazzle more players, Steve Smith more Pro Bowl votes, and fantasy players some cool prizes like tickets to the Pro Bowl.

To help Steve Smith get to the Pro Bowl, you have to become a fan of Steve Smith on Facebook and vote for him in the Pro Bowl. You can also win some Steve Smith memorabilia by playing Fantazzle’s free Steve Smith game. In case you were unaware, Fantazzle offers weekly fantasy sports games, which by the way, is a great thing for you to consider playing right now while your other fantasy teams may already be done for the season (there are other sites too, try FanDuel, SnapDraft.

While most of the endorsements I have seen by athletes for fantasy games have been “okay,” at best, this one I think is great because it is benefiting fantasy players and the athletes directly. More than likely, I bet Fantazzle did not have to even pay for this sponsorship package since it has such a symbiotic relationship.

The trip to the Pro Bowl will only be given away if Steve Smith gets enough votes to go to the Pro Bowl. No matter what happens, Steve Smith ends up with a much more personal and direct relationship with his fans as a result of this promotion and the daily interaction he now has with the over 55,000 Facebook fans he has now.

Well done. If you are thinking about a sponsorship, I hope you took some notes.

The title sponsor for Euroleague’s Fantasy Basketball Challenge is SportingBet. What is surprising is that the sponsor of this game last year was Nike. What caused the switch?

Does this mean a big advertiser like Nike has given up on fantasy? or just European fantasy basketball? or did NIKEiD have its budget cut? or could it be that Nike was simply outbid by Sporting Bet? The bigger issue is that a blue-chip sponsor was replaced by an online sportsbook. I think it is more one of the latter reasons, but is not entirely impossible for the former reasons. In terms of brand power, this is definitely a step backwards for Euroleague’s game.

Last year, NikeID very prominently sponsored the fantasy challenge. In case you are not familiar with it, NIKEiD is a site that allows customers to completely customize and order a pair of Nike sneakers, which makes fantasy basketball a good fit for sponsorship.

As a cultural aside, the idea of a sportsbook sponsoring a league’s official fantasy game would never happen. The professional leagues in the United States fight legalized gambling as much as they can and would never let a sportsbook sponsor its games.

Anyway, just something I noticed that I thought you might be interested to know.

Think you know how to pick stocks or just like investing based on the stock’s name? J.P. Morgan has a new Fantasy Fund Manager game for you! The premise is simple–build as big and successful a portfolio as possible. Make lots of fantasy money and end up winning real money, while learning a little bit about the market in the process.

J.P. Morgan is putting some significant muscle behind this year-long competition, with a top prize of £35,000 ($58,000), making it one of the larger free fantasy games on the market. There are additional cash prizes along with Amazon gift certificates and iPhones.

This is yet another example of a fantasy game being used to market to a different audience. The concept of fantasy games is so mainstream that it becomes an easy means to market your product.

While this is a United Kingdom based game, I find the idea of a fantasy fund manager game sort of funny in that wasn’t-treating-real-money-like-fantasy-money-what-got-us-into-this-economic-misery kind of way. Or, maybe that’s just me.

Anyway, if you are interested in, I recommend checking it out.

Additional Coverage
JPMorgan Fantasy Fund Manager competition: Choosing the right plays for better performance (FT Adviser)

If you are wondering what to get that die-hard fantasy football fan (or for yourself, for that matter), may I suggest you get them some fantasy football themed t-shirts? If you think about it, a t-shirt is probably the one thing in which fantasy football players are probably most comfortable. Why would you fight it?

Art of the Fan has some great fantasy football t-shirts. Below are three of my favorites that I came across from Art of the Fan and another site:

	As the shirt description says, “How do you think Harry Potter would do in fantasy football? He’d probably cast some sort of spell to get the first pick, but waste it on a quarterback.” This playful t-shirt brings two fantasy worlds into one. Purchase Fantasy Football at Busted Tees.
	Some people spend years learning to become a doctor or lawyer. But, not this man. He dedicated himself to finding the best way to optimize his fantasy football skills. While he may never actually win a championship, a fantasy football genius he is. Purchase Fantasy Football Genius at Art of the Fan.
	There are times when words cannot simply express how someone feels about the important things in life: family, love, and fantasy football. With this t-shirt straight from Prince’s playbook, your favorite fantasy player will know exactly how you feel about him. Purchase Fantasy Football Icon at Art of the Fan.

These are just the tip of the iceberg. There are tons more shirts that you get from Cafe Press and Busted Tees

Note: If you follow this links and purchase, I will receive a small commission.

Ultimately, every fantasy company has to decide what kind of software solution it will use. For a site that is purely article-driven, using a common blog format like Wordpress is an easy choice. But, if you want to do something more complex like host fantasy football leagues or create analysis tools, then it is not so cut and dry and will probably require some custom programming.

I came across a discussion on the Fantasy Sports Executives LinkedIn Group where Adam Becker of Fantasy Fiddler asked for Box Baseball:

Whatever budget you think you’ll need, triple it at least.

From Nick Scalise of ProvenPlays.com:

Find you content provider, find a partner and keep it simple out of the gate.

From Ngozika Nwaneri of PASPN:

When building a fantasy game you have to figure out your target audience and what about your concept will keep them engaged as you build a fan base around the game.

In addition, I would add that once you know who you are targeting, it is important to keep that customer in mind. If you are struggling with a feature or a display, find someone that is in that audience and have them test it out. Do not lose focus of your audience as you go.

Anything you would like to add to this discussion?

Quick post to get you a little pumped this morning. Last week I told you how you can Play Some Fantasy Serie A (Italian Soccer) at Serie A Live. Now, Serie A Live just released a new promo video for its site. It’s simple, fun, and should get you pumped (at least a little):

Hope you enjoyed that, and don’t forget to check back later today for some articles.

By harnessing the real-time nature of Twitter, Fantasy TweetZone lets fantasy players know who the most talked about fantasy football players are at any given moment. Right now, Larry Johnson’s release and uncertain status is topping its chart, as it should be. Fantasy TweetZone is an advertising tie-in with Sprint’s ad campaign where it totals everything that is going on in its network; Fantasy TweetZone totals up everything fantasy football related on Twitter.

I love the concept of this site because it gives fantasy players easy access to which players have significant developing news. Monitoring this site on a regular basis may give fantasy players an edge when a no-name player emerges on the chart, indicating that something is happening with that player. Also, it allows fantasy players to see how others view the same athletes. For example, clicking on Marion Barber’s TweetZone page right now brings up a number of trades that fantasy players are considering for Marion Barber. If you are a Barber owner or lust after having him on your team, you can get a feel for what might be a fair trade offer for Barber.

Unfortunately, the site has a bit of noise in its relevancy, such as being unable to differentiate jokes about Michael Vick and Reggie Bush from real fantasy news. Also, the most popular players tend to be the most talked about players, creating additional noise. However, for a first edition of this tool, I think this is an acceptable noise level. Besides, who still does not enjoy a good Michael Vick joke these days?

This is an excellent use of Twitter. Federated Media, the company that launched the tool, has taken public domain data and analyzed it to bring value to fantasy players. Currently, the site is only monitoring fantasy football, but with the site branding just as Fantasy TweetZone, don’t be surprised if this gets expanded into other sports.

Well done!

Note: Ads for this site may or may not have run on this site a month ago when I had some ads up from an ad network. I never saw the ads myself, but allegedly they were running.

Fantasy sports know no borders, and today I will take you to Italy. Serie A Live is a fantasy soccer league focusing on the top Italian soccer league, the Serie A. The site is the brainchild of Serie A-lover Vince Cullotta and is one of the very first independent fantasy Serie A sites out there, with only Yahoo! and ESPN among the big fantasy sites playing in the Italian soccer market.

My favorite part is that Serie A Live has created a challenge for next season with its Serie A Champions League. The top 30 teams will compete in a champions league next year. This little nuance will keep players playing once they are out of the hunt for the top spot. Three months into the Serie A season, of the 219 players signed up, about 179 actively playing, which is an impressive percentage. In addition, the site also features live scoring, which is very high-end feature and keeps fantasy players regularly engaged.

A point about the internationalization of fantasy sports. Think back to about 1990 when the fantasy industry was full of little niche sites creeping up everywhere. Ultimately, those sites merged, emerged, failed, were acquired, and became part of the fantasy sites that we grow and love today. Well, for the rest of the world, it is 1990 all over. Except, this time around the new fantasy companies have the playbook from the past twenty years. There is no reason to make the same mistakes and to not do what you not works.

When I see a new site like Serie A Live investing in the features that are essential to running a successful game, like live scoring, and ways to innovate the game, it gets me excited. Cullotta is investing in making a top product. Once the market demand for fantasy Serie A grows (it will, just as fantasy EPL has grown), Serie A Live will be in a great position to capitalize and gain those new customers.

Congratulations to Vince on the site launch, and good luck with Serie A Live!

This just made me laugh. I love fantasy sports because you can have fun with just about anything. Fantasy SCOTUS (Supreme Court of the United States) is for the legal buff or law student that takes an interest in the court system. This game allows users to act as the “Tenth Justice.” Surprisingly, the scoring for Fantasy SCOTUS is very intuitative and natural. Players need to determine how the court will side on a particular case and which justices will vote which way. Score points according to how close you are to the actual decision.

This game may actually take off as a niche fantasy game for law schools as a way of teaching constitutional law and understanding the dynamics of the Supreme Court.

As an aside, I think it’s hysterical that the Fantasy SCOTUS has to use a “.net” domain name, because someone actually already owns the “.com” domain name. In fact, the .com is available for $397, if you are really interested in purchasing it.

Congratulations to Fantasy SCOTUS on its launch, and good luck.

Lots of really good articles have been written in the last week or so, and these are a few I thought that I would pass along to you. Go ahead, take a read:

• From RotoWire: Usually the argument is whether fantasy football is better than fantasy baseball. But, Kenn Ruby dares to argue both sides of the “which is better, fantasy football or fantasy basketball” argument. Check out Why Fantasy Football is Better Than Fantasy Basketball and Why Fantasy Basketball is Better Than Fantasy Football
• From Open Sports: Daniel Dobish of Open Sports writes about ten reasons to play Fox’s Fantasy Quick challenge. Expect he never mentions that Fox Sports is a major investor in Open Sports and that Open Sports actually built the game for Fox (see: Fox Sports Outsources Fantasy to Open Sports). It is perfectly fine to promote your products, but let users know you are, because it is sort of illegal now, according to the latest FTC guidelines on advertisements.
• From USA Today: Looks like ESPN is looking to bid for March Madness, which has been on CBS Sports for the longest time. Honestly, I could careless which network broadcasts the NCAA Tournament, but if this means the end of March Madness on Demand, there will be some very upset fans (and happy managers).
• From Bleacher Report: I love this diatribe about how fantasy football on the whole needs to really start including real defensive stats. In Walter Kirkwood’s Man Up, America: It’s Time for Defense in Fantasy Football, I love how he asks if I even knew about Patrick Willis‘ phenomenal rookie season, and then he read my mind by daring me to name his team. I had clue (it’s SF), but the article is an entertaining read.

Don’t forget to come back here often for more fantasy goodness.