Fantasy Judgment

What is your name?

Michael A. Stein

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

I am the sole founder of Fantasy Judgment and I serve as the Chief Justice. However, the Fantasy Judgment bench is comprised of four other Associate Justices who help render legal decisions on disputes presented: Marc Stein, Ari, Teplitz, Nick Steffens and Jeff Mickletz.

What is your background and qualifications?

I am a lawyer and currently work as a complex claims director for a large insurance company in New York. I have over 25 years of experience participating in fantasy sports, both as a league member and as a commissioner. Through the years, I have seen just about anything and everything that can happen in a fantasy sports league. This, coupled with my professional experience and legal writing skills enable me to author Supreme Court-like decisions based on fact, precedent, and common sense.

What does your website do?

Fantasy Judgment provides independent, expert dispute resolution services for fantasy sports issues. We also provide assistance and guidance in drafting fantasy sports league constitutions, as well as advising on appropriate and effective league management decisions. I also utilize Fantasy Judgment to analyze and comment on the fantasy sports industry itself in various media outlets.

How do you generate revenue?

If through ads, what ad network do you use? I charge $15.00 per dispute or $100.00 for unlimited disputes per sports season. I did not begin this venture with the goal of quitting my job and earning a living solely based on Fantasy Judgment. I think there is truly a niche and a need for such a service. I know there are a few other websites out there that provide similar services, but I feel Fantasy Judgment has a superior bench with impressive backgrounds that lend to credibiity, reliability, and accuracy. I also am very passionate and enthusiastic about the fantasy sports industry as a whole, and I would like nothing more than to be able to contribute to the business that has provided me with so much enjoyment over the years.

How have your marketed your site?

Because this is currently a side venture, I did not have a lot of capital to start it up. The costs of building a website, obtaining a trademark, purchasing business cards, and filing the appropriate paperwork to create the entity pretty much exhausted my initial funds for Fantasy Judgment. So I have aggressively utilized free mediums of advertising, such as Facebook, LinkedIn, Google, and word of mouth.

Are you profitable?

Not currently. I believe that once I am able to spread the word effectively within the fantasy sports world, the business will take off and perhaps spin a profit down the road.

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

I am 100% self-funded.

Are You currently looking for funding?

As much as I would love to maintain my status as the sole decision-maker and owner of this entity, I am also realistic about its ability to grow, survive and thrive. I am not actively looking for funding, but it is something I know I will need to do. I want to build up some sort of database of customers and/or contacts to provide me with some credibility and sustainability so I can effectively negotiate with any potential investors.

What type(s) of technology do you use?

I have my own website for Fantasy Judgment, which also includes a blog. I have a Facebook page dedicated to Fantasy Judgment, and I use LinkedIn to promote my services as well.

What is your favorite feature on your website?

My favorite feature is the archived links to my previous decisions and articles. My writing skills for the decisions and articles I write are what will sell my abilities, so I take a lot of pride in being grammatically, factually, and conceptually accurate.

Any Bold Predictions for Sports and Technology in the future?

I foresee a mixed bag for fantasy sports down the road. I see there being a lot of backlash against the industry, including lobbying efforts to include fantasy sports under the ambit of gambling. However, I think fantasy sports has successfully attained mainstream status in the United States, and I do not see the business or industry slowing down at all except in the event that Congress or the U.S. Supreme Court does something inexplicable to contradict itself.

Interview With: Nigel Eccles

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

Nigel Eccles, Tom Griffiths, Rob Jones, Chris Stafford and Lesley Eccles

What are the founders’  backgrounds and qualifications?

I’ve worked in online gaming industry since 2000. From 2000 to 2002 I was a product manager for a person-to-person betting site called flutter.com. I led a project to re-launch it as a betting exchange, which lead to it merging with its nearest competitor, Betfair, at the start of 2002. Betfair, and the betting exchange concept, has gone on to revolutionize the online sports betting industry. Since then I’ve worked for another online betting site (BETDAQ) and the management consultancy McKinsey & Co. My co-founders, Tom, Rob and Chris have significant start-up experience having previously set up an online meet-up site called Groopit. Chris also has deep experience developing banking systems for HBOS PLC so we rely on him keeping our systems robust. Finally, Lesley, our marketing director, has around 10 years experience in technology marketing, most recently with Cap Gemini.

What does your website do?

Fanduel allows people to draft a team from players who are playing in sports games today. They can then pitch their team against a friend or another Fanduel user – for real money. The player whose team has the most fantasy points at the end of the day’s games wins the cash prize.

The game is a competitive draft rather than salary cap – making it much more challenging.  However unlike traditional competitive draft both players don’t have to draft at the same time. The way it works is one player drafts their first pick and a back-up for each position. They then order their draft and submit their roster. When they are matched with another user (a friend or another FanDuel user) the system works through each player’s draft in priority order. You get an email telling you and your opponent’s final roster and then you can watch the live stats on both fantasy teams update in real-time as the games progress.

It is purely fantasy baseball right now but the fantasy football game will launch with the start of the football season. Fantasy hockey and fantasy basketball will also follow.

When did you launch?

July 2009

How do you plan on building your community?

In the past we’ve found that it is vital to very attentive to your early users. They very quickly come to understand your product much better than you do. So one thing we are investing a significant amount of time into is in building and listening to that community.

What types of marketing do you utilize?

Affiliate Marketing, SEM, SEO, social media and some display. Additionally, we are in active discussions about implementing a co-brand with a number of large sports sites.

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

We don’t have any plans to put advertising on Fanduel. Our current objective is to make playing on the Fanduel the best experience possible so putting on advertising isn’t a priority.

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

In December 2008 we raised $1.2 million from Pentech Ventures. On current growth projections this should be sufficient to see us through to profitability.

Are you looking for more funding?

Not at the moment.

What is your favorite feature on your site?

The ability to challenge your friends to see who can pull together the better draft. This has created real rivalry in the office as we try to figure out what strategy our opponent is using. We are also planning some new functionality here to better show you your win/loss ratio against each of your opponents.

What type(s) of technology do you use?

Fanduel is built on a LAMP stack, with PHP as the development language. The sports data is provided via a live XML feed from our sports data partner.

Any bold predictions for sports and technology in the future?

I think that the casual and social gaming markets have seen a lot more innovation than fantasy sports in recent years. My expectation is that fantasy sports will catch up and we will see more social games with better integration with social networks like Twitter and Facebook. Additionally, I think we will see games that require less commitment to play. Season long fantasy games are great however, I think there is a huge un-tapped demand for more pick-up and play type games. Finally, as the advertising recession hits I think you are going to see more providers offering pay to play games. People are prepared to pay for a game that offers more significant prizes (which ad funded games can’t offer) and having a robust business model means the operator can invest in making high quality games.

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.

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)

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.