Posts Tagged ‘fantasy golf’

FSB Daily 6/21: Bloomberg, Razzball, Value of a Fan

Monday, June 21st, 2010

A roundup of items recently posted on the FSB News page.

– In this transcript from an interview on Moneyweb podcast, Bloomberg Sports head Bill Squadron speaks of the growth potential Bloomberg saw in the fantasy sports field and the role that played in developing its new sports-themed products. Squadron also says that the company plans to expand beyond baseball but has yet to nail down which sport will come next. That would seem to indicate no offerings for the upcoming NFL season, which will open in less than three months.

– Braves infielder Eric Hinske is not only a fantasy player, but apparently a fairly avid one. He informed Falcons quarterback Matt Ryan before Wednesday night’s game that the Falcons quarterback appeared on three of Hinske’s fantasy teams in 2009.

– Just to prove that pretty much everyone has an iPhone app at this point, fantasy content site Razzball has launched theirs. (Oh, come on. I’m joking. “Razz” is right there in the name.)

– According to this eMarketer report, a consumer that is a Facebook fan of your brand is likely to spend twice as much as one who is not a fan. The real value of a Facebook fan, however, is tough to nail down and will vary by that person’s activity level.

– Checking back in on Dreamstreet Golf, the startup fantasy game site that we mentioned on here about a month ago, it looks like the contest still has yet to launch. The just-completed U.S. Open had been the targeted first tournament, but anyone who has tried to put on an online game probably knows just how easy it can be to miss even the most realistic targets.

– Are you a sports uber fan? In her writeups of the recent Sports Marketing 2.0 VIP Summit, the OCD Chick mentioned Yahoo! Sports’ Kyle Laughlin classifying sports fans in the “casual,” “everyday” and “uber” categories. The qualifications for “uber” tend to match up with the most engaged and serious fantasy players. Yahoo!’s challenge/goal is to convert fans in the other two groups into engaged fantasy players.

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Dreamstreet Heads to Tee with Pay Golf Game

Monday, May 17th, 2010

Starting with next month’s U.S. Open, a group of golf fans will be turning the fantasy game they started playing 14 years ago into an online offering.

Dreamstreet Golf is the brainchild of Bill Hefferan, based on a game he and a golfing buddy have been playing for more than a decade.

The concept calls for 10-team leagues that would drafted golfers in each of the four majors, with each league sending its champion on to an end-of-season competition to coincide with The Players Championship.

“I looked into fantasy golf and I said, ‘what a big industry,’” Hefferan told the Times Herald-Record. “There’s nothing out there like this, where we are tying in local winners into a national competition.”

Of course, whereas the fantasy market has grown quite a bit in the past decade, it’s unclear how big the demand would be for a pay golf game, particularly one that costs $39.95. (We have yet to see prizes specified.) The Times Herald-Record story quotes Yahoo!’s David Geller as saying that his site gets more than 100,000 fantasy golf players a year, but that’s for a free game.

On the other hand, the generally affluent fantasy audience and general affluence of the crowd that is serious about its golf could create a desirable demographic and a small-but-devoted player base.

Dreamstreet Golf has reserved its spot online and hopes to have the site up in time for the U.S. Open. It’s unclear how they’ll treat this season with one major (The Masters) already out of the way, but we’ll be curious to see what kind of traction this fantasy golf concept might be able to find.

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KFFL Reaches Multisport Deal with RotoExperts

Monday, March 8th, 2010

FSB.com has learned that KFFL and RotoExperts have reached a syndication agreement that will put RotoExperts content on KFFL for three fantasy sports: NASCAR, soccer and golf.

Fantasy racing folks can now find RotoExperts branded sections on KFFL’s NASCAR home page: Picks and Points, Nationwide Series and Race Recap. Basically, RotoExperts will be providing race preview and wrap-ups for the Sprint Cup series, along with content for the lower-division Nationwide races.

Scott Engel of RotoExperts tells us that his site will also supply KFFL with weekly previews and reviews of English Premiership socceer action and similar weekly coverage of PGA events. There is currently no set ending point for the agreement between the fantasy content sites.

KFFL and RotoExperts each reside within Fantasy Sports Ventures’ Fantasy Players Network. Along with KFFL, Yahoo!, NFL.com, SI.com and USA Today Sports Weekly also syndicate RotoExperts material.

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Yahoo! Writers Win Twice, ESPN’s Allen Repeats

Tuesday, January 26th, 2010

Aside from the usual RotoWire haul, Yahoo! was a fairly big winner at Tuesday’s Fantasy Sports Writers Association awards ceremony.

The Web’s most-trafficked fantasy games site saw multi-sport writer Scott Pianowski take the trophy for best golf writer, with Brad Evans claiming the prize for best college sports writer.

Pianowski has previously been nominated as the top writer in baseball and hockey as well, and Evans ranked among this year’s final three in the football writer category.

KFFL’s Ryan Bonini triumphed in that category, with Scott White of CBS Sports claiming the top baseball writer prize.

Meanwhile, Sean Allen of ESPN.com won the top hockey writer award for the second straight year, making him the second two-time winner in the trophy’s four-year existence. Janet Eagleson of RotoWire won the first two times it was given out.

Here’s the full list of nominees (winners in bold) for the remaining categories …

Best Fantasy Football Publication
Fantasy Football Index
Pro Football Weekly/Yahoo!
RotoWire

Best Football Print Article
Michael Blunda, Pro Football Weekly
Ted Carlson, Fanball
Ben Ice, Fantasy Football Pro Forecast

Best Football Series
Tristan Cockcroft, ESPN
Adam Levitan, RotoWorld
Jeff Stotts, RotoWire

Football Writer of the Year
Ryan Bonini, KFFL
Brad Evans, Yahoo!
Derek VanRiper, RotoWire

Baseball Writer of the Year
David Regan, RotoWire
Derek VanRiper, RotoWire
Scott White, CBS Sports

College Sports Writer of the Year
John Baker, RapidDraft
Brad Evans, Yahoo!
Michael Hurcomb, CBS Sports

Golf Writer of the Year
Rob Bolton, RotoWorld
John McNamara, RotoWire
Scott Pianowski, Yahoo!

Hockey Writer of the Year
Sean Allen, ESPN
Rocky Bonanno, NHL.com
Scott Pianowski, Yahoo!

Best Humor Article
Ladd Biro, Sporting News
Paul Bourdett, RotoExperts
Mike Gilbert, RotoExperts

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