Tonight, the first pitch of the 2010 baseball season has been thrown and we are on our way! This is the most wonderful time of the year! Here’s a quick video clip that always gets me excited for the start of the baseball season. It’s a remake of a classic Chevrolet commercial. Enjoy!
What gets you excited for the start of the baseball season?
I love contests. Especially the kind of contests where it is free to enter, and if you win, you get something of value. The Sporting News is hosting a contest to find burning questions for its 2010 Fantasy Baseball Yearbook. To win a free fantasy yearbook, all you have to do is email a question to which you are dying to know. That simple.
While most fantasy baseball fans have checked out mentally until spring training, there are still thousands of fantasy players who are already contemplating what will the 2010 fantasy baseball bring. Those are the fantasy baseball players who are wondering what fantasy baseball position changes will occur. For some fantasy players, there is No Offseason.
Even though the contest may be out season, I love it. Contests like this are usually pretty cheap, likely to get attention, and help you interact with your users.
If the Sporting News selects your burning question, you will receive a free copy of the 2010 Fantasy Baseball Yearbook. To enter, email your questions to dailymail_bb@sportingnews.com and be sure to include your address. The deadline for entries is Nov. 7.
While ESPN consistently promotes its free fantasy football games, it has not completely abandoned the pay model. Fanball and ESPN just unveiled their new $50,000 Fantasy Football game. It is a pay-to-play salary cap game with point-style scoring, where the winner will take home a cool $50,000. Not too shabby for a $39.95 entry fee.
More importantly, the fact that two of the major players in the fantasy industry are teaming together on a game should make you take note. ESPN has become the number two player (behind Yahoo!) by offering completely free fantasy games. Fanball is the leader in pay-to-play games under its own brand, and hosting white-label games, such as the Fantasy Football Open Championship. According to Ryan Houson, Fanball’s Vice-President of Business Development, that this game came about through, “Lots of discussions. We discussed this a lot and we are excited it finally got done.” It is a win-win deal for both sides. It allows ESPN to tap into the pay-to-play market, while giving Fanball another game to market to its existing customer base, and more importantly, the ability to market to the millions of fantasy players that play at ESPN.
Congratulations to both sides on the deal, and I look forward to see how this relationship develops. If this is successful, you better expect to see something come fantasy baseball season.
In another example of fantasy sports industry consolidation, RealTime Fantasy Sports announced the acquisition of Fantasy City Sports. RealTime Fantasy Sports is one of the leading independent fantasy football sites out there, and the acquisition of Fantasy City Sports will help it grow its customer base.
According to its website, Fantasy City Sports has provided commissioner services to its clients since 1984, which would put them back into the pen and paper days, and one of the original sites. Fantasy City Sports owner Derek Olness said that the deal allows it customers to get “more flexibility in service options, including individual defensive players.” In other words, this purchase was probably more of a purchase of existing accounts, as Fantasy City Sports was either looking to get out of the fantasy industry, or other outside circumstances were causing Fantasy City Sports to need to leave the industry.
With literally hundreds of fantasy companies in existence, consolidation is inevitable. The value in this news is that it is important to remember that fantasy players are extremely loyal, and the once you have built a business with a loyal following, it creates real value in that business.
Congratulations to RT Sports and Fantasy City Sports on their new relationship.
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It is a couple of days into the offer, but if you tune your DirecTV boxes to channels 720 through 749, you will be able to enjoy a free preview of MLB Extra Innings on DirecTV through July 22nd. In case you are unfamiliar with MLB Extra Innings, its the ability to watch about 80 out-of-market baseball games on DirecTV.
If you like watching baseball than you know what to do with, or like obsessing over your fantasy baseball team, then you might want to check it out. It is hard to argue with this offer.
Using a few high-tech cameras, some very sophisticated software, Major League Baseball (MLB) is getting ready to revolutionize the world of baseball statistics. A player’s intangibles are becoming a little bit more tangible as its newDigital Eyes Will Chart Baseball’s Unseen Skills.
It looks like after losing its court case to have boxscores and player statistics to be taken out of the public domain (see: Fantasy Sports Win Right to Player Names, Statistics), MLB Advanced Media has found a way to create new statistics that it will own and will license as it sees fit. MLBAM will now have some statistics it can call its very own. MLBAM has not announced how it plans to distribute the data, and how much of the data will be made available to the public, and how much will stay private for use by the teams.
Currently in testing in San Francisco, four high-resolution cameras capture everything on the field in three dimensions. Then, the information is transmitted to a control room where very sophisticated software is able to differentiate a baseball from a runner. Each game produces over two million meaningful location points. These points are then used to determine how much ground an outfield covered, how long it took for a ball to land, how efficiently someone runs the bases, or numerous yet-to-be-thought of statistics. At a cost of $5M, MLBAM plans to have the system rolled out to every major league park by 2010.
From a fantasy perspective, this is just more information to determine if a player is good, or just lucky. More importantly, it might create stats that can be used in fantasy leagues. For the stat heads in the world of fantasy baseball, it may just be information overload.
Now, if we can just use that technology to see if a ball was actually fair or foul…
If you watched last night’s All Star Game, you probably saw a few commercials for Fox Sports’ new Fantasy Football game, which will offer fantasy players the opportunity to make substitutions during the week’s games. Prior to the game, Fox Sports announced that Open Sports will build and operate the Fox Sports’ fantasy offerings. The new live fantasy football game, is billed as Fox Fantasy Live, and will be built by Open Sports.
Here is the problem with Fox Fantasy Live–it really only appeals to the niche fantasy super-user. It is an intriguing concept, since every fantasy player has wanted to make a change after the deadline. However, to really get the benefit of this new feature, fantasy players are going to have to watch all of Sunday’s action and be on top of any developing action. If you choose to do something other than watch football on Sunday, your fantasy team will lose out to someone who is on top of it. Sort of takes the fun out of for the casual player.
If Fox wants to be known as the place that hardcore fantasy football players play, then this a great product. But, if Fox truly wants to be a Top Three fantasy site in a year, this is not going to do it. In fact, I think it might alienate some players, since not every player is going to want to play in leagues that need to be involved. Part of fantasy football’s success has been its simplicity, and this goes completely away from that. If you want to beat Yahoo!, ESPN, and CBS Sports in fantasy sports, you cannot do it with a product that has just a few newer bells and whistles. That is not going to be enough to get fantasy players to jump ship. To beat the Top Three, you need to change the game.
Actually, I amazed by this development because Fox Sports is sitting on a potentially huge fantasy game changer with Fox-ownedMySpace. Fantasy leagues are small social networks. MySpace is a ridiculously large social network. Why not build fantasy leagues around the places that they are already social? Yahoo! success can be partly attributed to the fact that most people have Yahoo! accounts, making sign-up really easy. Most people have MySpace accounts. Just a thought…
For Open Sports, this is a very big deal. Having a major media company partner and take an equity stake lends a large amount of credibility to Open Sports, and its mission to create the leading sports social network. Plus, Open Sports is able to continue developing its fantasy offerings while someone else (Fox Sports) is footing the bill. Update: Now that I have seen that Fox put about $4M into OPEN Sports as part of the deal, it is more than likely that OPEN Sports is providing fantasy to Fox Sports as part of its deal. Regardless, this is still a good deal for OPEN Sports because it gives them that major media partner that it needs.
This is not Fox Sports’ first attempt at a makeover, as it has tried to become a fantasy power for several years. In 2005, Fox Sports partnered with MSN to take on fantasy football. In 2007 and 2008, Fox Sports hired fantasy football legend LaDainian Tomlinson to be its pitchman. While it made for an amusing LT fantasy football commercial, it did not do much to convince fantasy players that Fox Sports was the site to play fantasy football.
Who knows if fantasy will work for Fox Sports, but at least the company is trying, and I wish them luck with it.
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At this point in the fantasy baseball season, one of my favorite things is to see how many of the major league All Stars are on my fantasy team. Why? Because generally, the more guys I have in the All-Star Game, the more likely my team is having a good season. That simple.
For example, this year, my National League-only team’s pitching staff is proud to have All Star starting pitcher Tim Lincecum on its roster, along with Chad Billingsley. As a direct of result of those two guys on my staff, I am first in four different pitching categories (pesky saves!). Unfortunately, my only offensive All Star is Justin Upton. The lack of offensive firepower is a consistent problem and explains why I am struggling to place better than sixth in any single offensive category, and why I am still trying to get out of the cellar in one category.
Remember, this is just the All Star game, so it does not really mean anything for fantasy baseball (aside from the Home Run Derby curse–my condolences to Prince Fielder’s owners). It is just a good barometer of how much top notch talent your team has. Alright, the game is about to start, let’s go check it out.
I love minor league baseball. Aside from the fact that the players are always fan-friendly, tickets are still pretty cheap, and you can always get a good seat, minor league baseball is always a source of great marketing an ingenuity. Back in January, the Brooklyn Cyclones announced that just for one night, they would be the Baracklyn Cyclones, in honor of President Barack Obama. If you are supporter or a hater, I am sure this news made you smile or groan. Either way, the Cyclones have your attention, and that is the point of marketing.
Well, tonight is the night. The Cyclones will be giving out Obama bobbleheads (pictured above) and providing free admission to anyone named Barack or plumbers named Joe, in addition to wearing alternate home jerseys (again, pictured above). Minor league baseball competes with places like movie theaters for customers, and it has to be creative to be successful. There is something to be said about a little shock value and a little humor to get people into the seat.
By the way, the Cyclones are reserving four seats right behind home plate for the first family. Just in case they decide to show up.
