Website: InstantArena

Founder: Dan Mezick

instantARENA™ platform allows instant, no-barrier entry into the booming fantasy sports gaming marketplace

North Haven, CT (PRWEB) February 11, 2009 — Player Ventures LLC today announces the immediate availability of instantARENA™, the world’s first brandable, white-label fantasy sports gaming solution.

“What instantARENA™ means for the industry is simple: Any web site with sports-related web traffic can now turn that traffic into immediate cash”, says Dan Mezick of Player Ventures LLC. “Our platform eliminates all the barriers to offering full-featured “pay to play” fantasy sports games. This is the world’s first brandable, turn-key, white-label, fantasy sports
game platform.”

The platform is a full-featured, comprehensive “turn key” solution for any web site owner who is looking to offer a branded, fun, revenue-generating game to online sports fans. The turnkey instantARENA™ solution includes total technical support for players, total site administration services, credit card payment processing, support for an affiliate network, and complete 24 X 7 on-line reporting.

Fantasy sports games are based on skill and are 100% legal in the Unites States. The market for these games of skill is growing very rapidly. Player Ventures is reviewing applications from select web site operators who have substantial sports and gaming-related web traffic.

Thanks to Roto Nation we have learned that Citizen Sports formerly ProTrade has purchased Sportacular, FantasyBook, and Sport Interactiva.  By making these purchase Citizen Sports is looking to dominate the Social Network Application sports space.  Sportacular gives Citizen Sports one of the best IPhone sports apps out there.  FantasyBook and Citizen Sports were the only two companies that launched Fantasy Football facebook applications that had solid adoption.  I am sure that is going to change in the future.  FantasyBook also brings their baseball application as well.  Sports Interactiva gives Citizen Sports  the best fantasy soccer Facebook application.

Citizen Sports is well positioned to be the sports lead in the app market for facebook, myspace, and the IPhone.  Now that they have positioned themselves well it will be interesting to see how they actually make money off these applications.

OnePlaybook

Website: OnePlaybook

Interview With: Brian Manning

Is their more then one founder? If so, who are they?

Yes, while Brian Manning is the principal employee and primary founder, Chris Klaiber is another founder of OnePlaybook.

What is your background and qualifications?

As a former college football player, I saw how coaches could benefit from some emerging technologies.  After leaving college, I worked as an Internet Consultant for small insurance companies prior to working on my own on OnePlaybook and doing freelance and contract web design and development.

What does your website do?

OnePlaybook is a coach’s team management application.  That sounds pretty broad, and that’s because OnePlaybook has a broad range of features.  Coaches can draw plays for their players, post announcements, share videos, upload documents, to name a few things.  It’s a central repository for any information that a coach would want to give his players.  The idea was to make sure that a coach never has to physically hand a player anything besides his equipment.

How do you generate revenue? If through ads, what ad network do you use?

Right now, all of the revenue is through paid subscriptions.  There is a free version among the variety of packages available for teams, and currently there are no ads on any of those versions.

How have your marketed your site?

At this point, it has been mostly been through referrals and direct selling, though with an updated release of OnePlaybook in August, there are packages designed to fit any budget and many sports are supported, so our marketing efforts are beginning to broaden.

Funding: Self funded, Angel Investment, or Venture Capital?

Self-Funded, though things could change.

Are You currently looking for funding?

We are not pursuing funding at this time, though offers would be entertained.

What type(s) of technology do you use?

OnePlaybook is built on a foundation of ASP.Net and Microsoft SQL.  There is also an exensive use of Javascript and Flash in addition to Flash video.  Finally, there is also a Desktop Video Conversion program that takes video and converts it to flash video to make uploading and viewing the video faster and easier.

What is your favorite feature on your website?

Personally, I like the ability to attach video to plays that are drawn online.  This gives players yet another avenue to learn the gameplan and play schemes.  Though, the coaches I talk to often enjoy the ease and simplicity of having everything in one place, as well as knowing that that one place is secure - no one can leave their playbook lying out in the lockerroom anymore.

Any Bold Predictions for Sports and Technology in the future?

Sports are a pretty old school arena, especially in the area of coaching.  While in the professional levels, coaches can keep up with current trends and the most recent technology, many colleges and high schools do not have the resources or support to do that.  People in business may talk about the paperless office, but never in sports.  OnePlaybook aims to change that and allow coaches to go digital.

Sports Blog Net

SportsBlogNet.com is a website that incorporates original sports content and a network of sports blogs that puts sports fans and writers in the driver’s seat.

At SportsBlogNet.com you can:

• Read all the quality blogs in the network
• Write for a blog in the network
• Discover new blogs
• Build a new free sports blog
• Join the network as an additional revenue and traffic source for your sports blog

“We feel that we have built a quality product that gives sports bloggers the ability to succeed and sports fans an easy way to find great content. We have received great feedback from the bloggers in the network so far and plan to always be adding great new features,” said Rich Spott CTO and Co-founder of SportsBlogNet.com.

SportsBlogNet.com currently has approximately 56 blogs in the network with a reach of approximately 200,000 unique visitors per month which is growing daily. Currently SportsBlogNet.com links out to all our blogs in the network and also sells direct ads for all the blogs in the network.

It is SportsBlogNet.com’s mission to make both small and large sports blogs as successful as possible in terms of their revenue and traffic. Their goals are to get all the blogs in the network out to the masses, give new bloggers the ability to get the exposure they are looking for, and give sports fans a destination that they want to visit everyday.

Along with the launch of SportsBlogNet.com, Union Sports Blog will launch as a SportsBlogNet.com property. Union will be “The Most Collaborative Sports Blog on the Internet”. “Eventually we plan to have a new writer every day of the month. We found that there are many sports bloggers out there that cover a certain team or niche but they also want to write about other topics. Union provides that,” said Rich Spott Co-founder of SportsBlogNet.com.

(Disclosure: We are part owners of SportsBlogNet)

Website: The Sports Bizzo

Interview With: Toph Miller

When did you start your blog?

The Sports Bizzo was started in April.

What made you start it?

Jon (”co-founder”) and I (Toph) decided it was time for us to get our voice out. One of those things where we thought we were really witty, clever and had insight, so we decided to share it. We started off wanting to do podcast (and do currently), and The Bizzo evolved around that.

What is your background?

Jon’s background is in playwriting. Mine is in advertising and copywriting.

Do you blog for fun or are you trying to make it a career? What is your goal with this blog?

We blog because we enjoy writing and think we have relevant opinions. Who wouldn’t want this to be a career? But, it’s not our main goal. Becoming obscenely famous is our main goal. Our goal with The Bizzo is just like every other blogs goal - drive traffic and get noticed.

What was your tipping point? What put you on the map? (if you bring in more the 5,000 uniques a month)

Our first visitor was our tipping point. Someone once said to me, “If only one person shows up, then it was all worth it.” Sure, that person had no idea what they were talking about, but I still listened.

What type of blogging software do you use?

We use Wordpress.

What ad network(s) do you use?

7 million……

How much money do you make off your site monthly?

Money? People make money off these things?!

If you could get something for free to help you out with your blog, what would it be? (Ex: design, marketing, ad optimization, etc)

Advertising. Lots and lots of advertising.

What are some of your favorite blogs?

TophSpeaks.com, BlogMaverick.com, BloggingTheBoys.com, MavsMoneyball.com and your various top Sports Blogs.

Any bold predictions for the future of sports on the internet?

Bold predictions? Sports will no longer be on TV, but streamed lived online. No? How about, traditional newspapers and beat writers will all be put out of a job, and blogs will take over. How does that sound?

*With Leather is now hosted at withleather.uproxx.com but the Alexa numbers are not accurate yet so we are still using their .com unique numbers.  Kissing Suzy Kolber is hosted at kissmesuzy.blogspot.com, Kissingsuzykolber.net, and now kissingsuzykolber.uproxx.com. Most of their traffic goes to the blogspot address so we used that address for stats. The same is true for Awful Announcing.  Mgoblog is only at Mgoblog.blogspot.com

For those of you who have visited our rankings before you will notice we are no longer using Compete.com.  Thanks to the newly released Google Ad Planner, we bring you new and improved rankings here at SportsTechNow.  Google Ad Planner is actually built for Media Planners but they also rank sites and give unique visitors for the previous month.  Our numbers will be based off of US numbers.  Their system should outperform Compete as Google can lean on their Toolbar and Google Analytics stats for site usage numbers.  We still need to use Alexa for sites that are tracked at a blogspot domain or now in the case of With Leather and Kissing Suzy Kolber at the uproxx.com domain.

New to the list this month are MixMakers.net, TheAngryT.com, and SportsCracklePop.com.  The amazing thing about SportsCracklePop is that they have only been around since April.

You can view why we pick these sites and not others at the bottom of April’s Top 25 Sports Blogs.

*Kissing Suzy Kolber is hosted at kissmesuzy.blogspot.com and Kissingsuzykolber.net. Most of their traffic goes to the blogspot address so we used that address for stats. The same is true for Awful Announcing.  Mgoblog is only at Mgoblog.blogspot.com

Honorable mention goes to Larry Brown Sports (16,303 uniques), and Mister Irrelevant (15,654 uniques).  New sites added this month are The Offside, Brahsome, and Cuzoogle.  Busted Coverage has been removed from the list due to too much tail and not enough sports.

It’s interesting to see that all the major blogs had huge jumps in traffic from April’s Top 25 Sports Blogs.  Not too sure why that is.  I wonder if anyone has some thoughts on that.

As always the list is put together using Compete.com’s measurement statistics of unique visitors for the month.  Keep in mind that these numbers aren’t necessarily accurate but Compete.com does a great job comparing one site to another making the rankings accurate.  Alexa is used to rank sites that are not tracked by Compete.  If you think your site should be on the list send it to info{a}sportstechnow.com and we will check it out and consider it for next month.

*Kissing Suzy Kolber is hosted at kissmesuzy.blogspot.com and Kissingsuzykolber.net. Most of their traffic goes to the blogspot address so we used that address for stats. The same is true for Awful Announcing.  Mgoblog is only at Mgoblog.blogspot.com

It looks like sports blog visits overall where down compared to last month.  We would think this would have to do with the NCAA tournament taking more eyeballs to the main network sites.  New to the list this month is MgoBlog which is a fine Michigan blog that we did not know about.

Fox Sports decided to run with a story on the popular Matt Leinart Drunk Pictures floating around the internet that originated at The Dirty. Here is the article that Fox Sports has on the subject.

It seems like they should have just reported on the story and linked to the pictures or not put the pictures up at all. We all know there are blogs all over the internet that use photos like this to get attention. In the early days pictures like these propelled Deadspin to the number one blog on the internet. I think its real interesting that there is not an author on the Fox Sports article. It’s almost like some editor desperate for page views wanted to do a story but none of his writers wanted to do it.  Probably because they have integrity.

Website:  Rotowhine

Interview With:  Jeff Andriesse

How many founders does Rotowhine have and what are their names?

Rotowhine was founded by me (Jeff Andriesse) and Greg Fox.

What are the founders’ backgrounds and qualifications?

Greg and I both have backgrounds as sports information directors for universities, where we did a lot of things that have helped us make the transition to Rotowhine smooth. We were both writers and editors who managed web sites. In terms of fantasy sports, it is just something he and I have done for a while now. We are pretty insane about it. That’s probably helped us as well. If we were rational, this would never have gotten off the ground.

What does your website do?

We are a glorified blog, in essence. We each write long columns and short blog posts. We also have podcasts and a message board.

When did you launch?

We launched in July of 2007.

How have you built your community?

Word of mouth through friends and family to start out. We have slowly gotten hits through Google Ad placement and some link sharing. We are still in the infant stages of this thing. Our budget is very small for advertising, so we are biding our time and hoping that we get noticed. You have to really believe in your content for that to happen.  There has been a lot of positive feedback, so that’s a good sign. Our goal is to be one of those Bookmarks everyone goes to during downtime at work.

What types of marketing do you utilize?

Google Ads, primarily.

Do you have any revenue streams besides advertisement? Who is your ad provider?

We have no revenue streams. We are not selling fantasy game playing or gambling, merely providing content. Thinking about Rotowhine actually producing consistent revenue seems very far away. That said, it has never been why we started this. Rotowhine actually began several years ago with a blog at Blogspot and we have only recently launched the site as it looks now. In short, it is a labor of love. We’re both keeping our day jobs for the moment.

Funding: Self funded, Angel Investment, or Venture Capital?

We are completely self funded.

Are you looking for more funding?

Ideally, we will find investors who can enable us to do some aggressive marketing. Right now we are just looking to get noticed by the right people who may like what we’re doing enough to either use our content on their sites or hire us to write. We just entered into a deal with FantasyFanatics.com to produce a weekly fantasy basketball column for them in exchange for placing their RSS feed on our web site.

What is your favorite feature on your site?

We have advertised for guest writers, and while we have only used one person’s submissions thus far, I think our Guest Column program has a lot of potential. We aren’t paying, but we want to become a web site that is more than just two people writing everything. Our guest columns allow us to start building a real community. With our backgrounds, we are pretty picky as to who we give a column to. Nate Sullivan is a guy we met through this web site, and he’s submitted some stuff. He’s a very good young writer. We’d love to build a stable of columnists and bloggers. Right now, in fact, we are starting a world-wide search for a blogger who can take over the Daily Whine section of our site and allow Greg and I to focus on columns and special features.

What type(s) of technology do you use?

I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention the fine work of my colleague Chris Bernardi, our webmaster. He’s made the site what it is: much more than a blog. We use WordPress for our content management but thanks to Chris we’ve incorporated it into a unique-looking site. We have podcast and message board capabilities, so we’ve incorporated a lot of things into the site.

Any bold predictions for sports and technology in the future?

As long as there are servers humming, sports will thrive on the web. Fantasy sports is a booming hobby with web sites galore. Our task is daunting in the face of so much quantity and quality. I don’t think any prediction regarding fantasy sports would be bold at this point. Anything is possible. It is an exciting time.