In an interesting move, it appears that CBSSports.com is abandoning fantasy golf and fantasy NASCAR for the 2010 season. I heard some rumors about this over the last month and received confirmation from a message board posting by CBSSports.com writer Ross Davenport in a discussion about CBS 2010 Fantasy Golf.
I have an email in to CBSSports.com about this development, and will update once I know more. My guess is that this was a money thing. Fantasy golf and fantasy nascar, despite the hope for these sports, just do not have the numbers to justify the costs of the games. Between statistic costs, software maintenance, marketing, and writers, running a fantasy game on a major site like CBSSports.com could easily get expensive with very little direct return to date. With everyone’s budgets tight these days, it is not surprising to see a reduction in services.
Killing these games is surprising to me for different reasons. Golf and CBS Sports have a long standing relationship, so CBSSports.com dropping fantasy golf is a pretty big indication of how futile its efforts have been in developing the fantasy golf market.
Fantasy NASCAR has had a lot of hype around it as the next big fantasy game. However, it is still exactly that– hype. That market has not quite materialized as everyone had imagined. Perhaps this is CBSSports.com deciding that the market is just not there yet, and it needs to cut bait.
Definitely an interesting development. What do you think?
In the mean time, you can check out my earlier post about where to play fantasy golf if you now find yourself in need of a new fantasy golf league.
2 Comments, Comment or Ping
John Hohlen
Boy, this sure was a big surprise. My understanding is that the fantasy golf decision was made prior before to Tigergate making the headlines. I’ve heard CBS Sports had about 50,000 users playing fantasy golf, so that’s nothing to sneeze at. If any of them are looking for a new game, I’d certainly like to invite them to try Pro Tour Fantasy Golf. Nonetheless, this is a real tragedy for CBS and the PGA Tour. Even though the PGA Tour has its own game via Yahoo!, the PGA Tour needs fantasy golf — maybe this year more than ever. The more fantasy golf games there are, the more participants players there are, which means more viewership. In my opinion, fantasy golf is what makes watching golf on TV interesting outside the 4 majors. It’s fun to have golfers to cheer for each week in a sport where you don’t have a home team to root for. Over the past few years, fantasy golf has been considered one the fastest growing fantasy sports markets. But I guess not growing enough in the eyes of CBS. I can certainly attest to the cost of running fantasy sports games. There is a lot expense than what most people realize — development costs, testing, server hosting, advertising, prizes, customer support, statistics, etc. So in this current economic environment, it’s easy to see how expenses can exceed income, especially for a free game such as CBS’s. But I would have never expected this in a million years because when I think PGA golf and network TV, I think CBS – as you alluded to.
Dec 26th, 2009