Trades may be the single largest cause of disputes in fantasy leagues leading to the collapse of leagues and even the demise of friendships. A cottage industry to help settling fantasy disputes has developed catering to this market with sites like SportsJudge and Fantasy Dispute. A reader sent me this screen grab from his Yahoo! Fantasy Baseball sign-up, and the lower right corner, you see a new offering:

In the lower right corner it says:

Yahoo! Sports Trade Review: Yahoo! Sports staff members will review all trade protests and veto trades deemed to be unfair to the rest of the league. Just $14.99 per league.

Yahoo! has established themselves as a third-party evaluator of trades for fantasy leagues. By making sign-up part of the sign-up process, Yahoo! has made it very tempting and very easy for fantasy commissioners to remove themselves from what can become a very controversial issue within leagues.

This is good news and bad news for fantasy dispute services like Sports Judge and Fantasy Dispute. Yahoo’s entry into this market will help educate consumers about the availability of third-party fantasy dispute resolution. The bad news is that Yahoo!’s price is much lower and integrates easily seamlessly into its fantasy commissioner product. Those are things that the dispute services will not be able to compete with very easily, if at all.

With Yahoo! charging just $15 for the whole season unlimited trade resolutions, that blows away the $15 per dispute that the other fantasy dispute services charge. There is a difference in service levels as Fantasy Dispute and SportsJudge can evaluate more than trades and provide well-thought responses as to how it reached its ruling, which is above and beyond what Yahoo! appears to be offering. The question then becomes what level of service will fantasy leagues desire?

Continuing this year’s trend of the big guys stepping up their fantasy baseball game, CBSSports.com has unleashed new upgrades to its games that are bound to make fantasy baseball players happy. Whether it is free leagues, premium offerings, or high stakes leagues, CBSSports.com is making a plea to attract every type of fantasy baseball player this season.

One of the big new offerings is a free fantasy baseball game. From the looks of it, it is a scaled down version of CBSSports.com’s fantasy baseball commissioner (which currently goes for $159). But, it does have the premium features like live scoring. In addition, CBSSports.com will give one lucky league champion a prize of $10,000. All you have to do is win your league and you are eligible for the grand prize. That is a nice cherry on top of anyone’s season. A free fantasy baseball offering was almost a necessity for CBSSports.com since Yahoo! and ESPN have stepped up their free fantasy baseball offerings and are focusing their attention on the free offerings.

CBS Sports Mobile has made accessing your fantasy baseball team much easier this season. The site has a much more mobile friendly version that is accessible from all mobile phones. Fantasy players should be able to make moves and check player news with ease, whether they are at home or out shopping with their wives.

One of the things that separates CBSSports.com’s premium fantasy baseball games from Yahoo! and ESPN is that it offers higher stakes leagues that go as a high as $499.99 entry with a $3500 top prize. If you are looking for a competitive fantasy league, high stakes leagues always offer a challenge.

CBSSports.com fantasy baseball products are one of the oldest around in the industry and offer a rich playing experience.

Shifting away from some of the more traditional fantasy games (read: fantasy sports) for a moment, there is a small burgeoning niche market around entertainment games, and fantasy American Idol is one of the most popular ones to play. Fantasy Pop has just released its Unofficial Fantasy American Idol game. With Simon Cowell departing after this season, this may be your last chance to prove that you know a lot more about music than Simon does.

Each week, fantasy players rank who they think is most likely to be the next American Idol, which conversely indicates who they think is most likely to be voted off the show. The longer a player’s high picks last, the better that person’s team does. Currently, you can create your own private league and play with your American Idol loving friends.

The site design is pretty bare and generic, which is intentional right now, according to creator Rudy Menendez. He said he is spending much more time on usability and gameplay right now, and will focus more on the aesthetics later. Menendez previously was the Chief Technology Officer at Fanball, so he knows a little bit (or a lot) about developing fantasy games. Also involved in the development of the game is former Fanball founder Paul Charchian, which just adds to my previous article about Charch Quietly Building a Fantasy Empire.

Go, play now. Otherwise, you will be looking like a fool with his pants on the ground.

The idea of running mock drafts for fantasy leagues barely existed. People would what if the first round or two, but never took it much farther than that. Then, Mock Draft Central proved that there was a market for fantasy players wanting to practice their drafting skills. CBSSports.com, ESPN Fantasy, and Yahoo! Fantasy Sports have all since followed suit, and have mock drafts available to their players. Mock drafts are a big deal now; they are such a big deal that RotoWire just acquired Mock Draft Central for at least a few hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Last week, I told you about FantasyNASCAR.com is for sale. Well, I have spoken with Ayse Uras who is the owner of FantasyMock.com and FantasyMock.net, and those domain names are for sale if you are interested. While a domain name is not everything (as I discussed in the NASCAR post), it is a good start and does help focus the development of the site.

If you are interested in the domain name and/or start a domain name around the FantasyMock.com domain name, you can contact Ayse at urasay at gmail.com.

For the longest time, Yahoo! Fantasy Sports charged for its Stat Tracker. This little feature sucked you in during Week 1 of your fantasy football season. Week 1 was free, but if you wanted that hit for the rest of the season, you would have to pay Yahoo! a measly $10. While Yahoo! Fantasy Football was “free,” I knew very few players that actually paid nothing to the site. Alternatively, leagues could sign up for a Fantasy Football Plus account for $125, which gave every team member Stat Tracker, plus a few other minor bells and whistles. But, things are different now, and as a result of its actions, it is possible that Yahoo! may have destroyed the paid fantasy commissioner market.

For the 2009 fantasy football season, Yahoo! made Stat Tracker available for free. In addition, Free Agent Acquisition Budgets became available for use on the waiver wire. Both of these features were previously premium options. The biggest change was that Fantasy Football Plus was now only $30, which mainly covered the costs of the championship trophy and the draft guides that it provided its players. For the 2010 fantasy baseball season, Yahoo! has gone one step further and got rid of the Plus package all together, made Stat Tracker free, and added auction drafts to the site. It is a much better product than the previous version.

In other words, the reasons that would often cause fantasy leagues to want to move to a “better” paid fantasy commissioner site are quickly going away. Why would you pay $75 to $175 (or more) for a commissioner service when your league can get almost all of the features you need out of Yahoo?

In the past, with its clean interfaces, Yahoo! was great for new leagues or leagues looking to keep it simple and casual. Leagues would normally graduate from Yahoo! to a much more premium service. But now, with these premium features, Yahoo! is speaking to the experienced leagues that want a little more intense fantasy experience.

ESPN Fantasy helped put fantasy down this very free path over the last few years as it made has made a big push, leading by making fantasy football and fantasy baseball free and adding premium options for free. Now, it appears Yahoo! is slowly, but surely, following suit. Yahoo! is the clear leader in the fantasy sports market, so when it shifts strategy, everyone should take note. The emphasis on a free, ad-supported revenue model by the Top two fantasy sites is not a good sign for the paid guys.

Does this mean paid commissioner products are going to completely disappear and suffer? No, I don’t believe that for a second. According to Kevin Austin of MyFantasyLeague, “We still grew at a very good clip this year over last, in spite of Yahoo and ESPN both having increasingly good, free products, and in spite of the country-wide economic situation.” Many of the leagues that the paid commissioner services cater to have special or unique rules that sites like MyFantasyLeague cater too. The ability for this to be a continuing trend is what worries me most.

What is your take? Do you think Yahoo!’s completely free move will hurt paid commissioner services?

In our next installment of our Fantasy Book Review series here on Fantasy Ethos, I am happy announce that today’s review centers around the new 2010 Baseball Forecaster by Ron Shandler.

When it comes to fantasy baseball, Ron Shandler is one of the most well-known and renown experts. Every year, he shares his thoughts and predictions for the upcoming season by publishing his Baseball Forecaster, which is now in its 24th edition. The 2010 Baseball Forecaster has its usual suite of player projections based on sabermetric tools that Shandler and the BaseballHQ team have refined over the last three decades. If you are a fantasy player who likes doing it by the numbers, the 2010 Baseball Forecaster probably deserves a spot on your bookshelf.

What separates this book from another just another set of predictions is that it puts a lot of emphasis into making use of the data in additional analysis and the formation of actual strategies for playing fantasy baseball. There are all sorts of extras like reliability grades, consistency rankings, and five-year trends that are useful to the fantasy player.

One of the new items in this edition of the Baseball Forecaster is that Shandler is unleasing the Mayberry Method on the fantasy baseball world. This book does not just tell you who is likely to have a big season, but it is innovating and taking new approaches to help you win your next fantasy baseball championship.

As an added bonus for the book owner, since the book is published during the off-season, updated projections are available online on March 1 on BasebalHQ.

You may purchase 2010 Baseball Forecaster at Amazon , via our affiliate link (which helps fund this site).

Have you checked it out, what are your thoughts on the 2010 Baseball Forecaster?

The concept of simulated fantasy games is new, but Yesteryear Fantasy Sports has put a new twist on the game. To play, draft a roster of historical players and play head-to-head like regular fantasy football game. However, for your players’ game statistics, YesterYear’s Fantasy Football’s system will randomly select real statistics from a three-year window of that player’s career. The game is free to play if you want an autodrafted team, or $3.99 if you would like to select your own team. Currently, YesterYear is hosting a challenge in which the top teams will get a chance to compete NFL greats like Mike Ditka (Da Bears!), Tony Dorsett and Dwight Clark.

I am not sure what I think about this game, since you know exactly how well your players will perform. The more I think about it, while in theory you will know, it is possible that a player will have all of his big games in one season or could have all of his bad games in a season. In other words, your players could still be total studs or duds, just like regular fantasy football.

Simulated games are not a new concept. YesterYear competes with other simulated games like WhatIfSports, which has been offering siumulated games for a number of years. Heck, simulated games go way back to the card and dice game with things like APBA Baseball and Strat-O-Matic. Personally, I am a fan of simulated games.

The best thing that YesterYear Fantasy Sports has done is framed this as a continuation of fantasy football season. In fact, it seems to avoid words likes “simulated,” as they imply something much geekier and less cool.

Good news is that a part of the proceeds go to the Gridiron Greats fund, which supports retired football players from when football players did not make mountains of money.

Additional Information

http://www.newswiretoday.com/news/64861/
• YesterYear Fantasy Challenge Kicks Off New Season in Fantasy Sports (Press Release)

When a company is the clear market leader, which Yahoo Fantasy Baseball is, it tends to be slow and not innovate. While I would say Yahoo! has not done anything groundbreaking with its latest edition, this season Yahoo Fantasy Baseball is substantially improved over previous editions.

The first big change is that live scoring is now free. Live scoring is the drug within fantasy baseball that makes fantasy players stare endlessly at a screen, while waiting for at bats and hits to pop onto the screen. In a related move, Yahoo Fantasy Baseball has gotten rid of its Plus option, and made its fantasy baseball game completely free for all fantasy players.

The second big change for Yahoo Fantasy Baseball is the ability to conduct online auction drafts. Previously, auction drafts either had to be held offline or through a different means online. This year, it is built seamlessly into Yahoo Fantasy Baseball. Auction drafts have been on the rise for many years, and it is about time it found its way into Yahoo!. While this feature is nothing new, its inclusion is a substantial improvement.

While I do not have an iPhone, the fact that there is an iPhone app is essential and a nice improvement. The ability to adjust your roster wherever you are is much more important in fantasy baseball where player moves are made on a daily basis. The key question here is, are fantasy baseball players more likely to carry an iPhone or a Blackberry?

My personal favorite is the inclusion of Free Agent Acquisition Budgets (FAAB) are finally available in Yahoo Fantasy Baseball. The way FAAB works is that instead of depending on the randomness of the waiver wire, each fantasy player has a budget of fictional dollars that he can use to pick up players as he chooses. Everyone has a shot at every player, as long as he is willing to pay for the player. The exclusion of FAAB has been a glaring hole for a number years, as many more sophisticated leagues prefer to use it.

There are a few other smaller improvements that you might like even more, and you can check out all of the new features at Yahoo Fantasy Baseball.

Overall, this probably the best upgrade Yahoo Fantasy Baseball has had in the last few years, and is definitely worth your consideration for your 2010 fantasy baseball league.

While the long-term viability of fantasy NASCAR is still unclear, if you want to get into the fantasy racing mix, the domain name FantasyNASCAR.com is currently for sale. A quick visit to fantasynascar.com, you will see a single quote:

One thing is forever good; That one thing is Success.

The quote is from Ralph Waldo Emerson and is suggesting, in this case, that owning the domain name will help bring its new owner success. It does not take a rocket scientist to see that a fantasy racing site called FantasyNASCAR.com would enjoy many advantages such as recallability and, most importantly, search engine optimization. A current, credible Fantasy NASCAR site, would easily float to the top of the search rankings, bringing instant traffic to the site. What a would-be owner does with that traffic is a different story, but the opportunity for success would be there. If you are interested in purchasing the domain name, you may email info@gibbsestate.com for further details.

Of course, one should be warned when purchasing a domain name with a trademark, that you may ultimately lose it. Large companies (like NASCAR) have lawyers and know how to get domain names that infringe on their trademarks. For example, earlier this week, Microsoft had 23 Windows related domain names transferred to it.

However, if you were to buy FantasyNASCAR.com and build a fantasy NASCAR site that promoted the sport and was a compliment to regular NASCAR coverage, you would be in a much better position to not instantly lose your site. It would be to NASCAR’s and your benefit to work out a relationship that will allow you both to succeed. Just remember that ultimately NASCAR does hold the final leverage and could probably get the name domain from you.

The beautiful thing about fantasy sports is that there is no sport too small for fantasy sports. It is all about engaging your fan base and enhancing the experience for them. Motorcycle USA is currently running three different fantasy racing games: Fantasy Superbike 2010, Fantasy GP 2010, and Fantasy Motorcross 2010.

The games are free to play and offer a pretty nice prize just for entering: an all-inclusive VIP vacation to see the Red Bull US Grand Prix at Laguna Seca. I love when fantasy games provide prizes that are unique to their support, because it reinforces the sense of community and commitment to the sport that the fantasy games set out to achieve. It probably would not take you too long to get up to speed on which drivers are worthy of your picks.

If you like people riding fast on motorcycles doing really cool things and/or you like playing fantasy sports, you may want to enter this contest. This brings up another cool thing about smaller niche fantasy games; they are easier to win. They do not have the volume of players that other fantasy leagues have, which means your odds of winning a worthwhile top prize have significantly increased.