OneSeason Over
Wednesday, January 20th, 2010
We made a few mentions here over the past year plus of OneSeason.com, a sports stock-market type of game that launched back in 2008. Well, the site’s run appears to have ended in the fall.
A note on the site now tells users about how existing funds will be paid out (and should have been paid out by Dec. 15.
“This end of service may come as an unpleasant surprise and is certainly not the outcome we hoped to achieve,” the note reads. “Unfortunately we have not been able to create a sustainable business and do not have the resources to continue operating.”
The OneSeason concept revolved around a stock-market style in which users bought and sold shares of teams and athletes, trying to capitalize on predicting trends in popularity. Rather than the value of a player’s shares rising or falling because of his on-field performance, prices moved on market popularity. More people buying shares of Miles Austin made him worth more. People dumping Tiger Woods would have led to decline — regardless of what kind of numbers the particularly athlete produced in his sport.
The site made it to the finals in the Fantasy Sports Trade Association’s Best New Website category for the 2008 awards and even garnered a writeup by The Wall Street Journal’s Nando Di Fino. The idea even reportedly brought at least a few million dollars in funding and drew former NFL great Ronnie Lott to get involved.
Although it’s easy to see how one might become interested in the concept and the game itself (particularly with real money at stake), FSB.com never really believed OneSeason passed the test to qualify as “fantasy.” As far as we’re concerned, your game/contest needs to rely on actual sporting results to pass that test.
Di Fino’s report from October 2008 asked the question of whether there was enough skill involved to keep OneSeason from falling into the “gambling” category under law, but it appeared that the company gave that issue full treatment and probably shouldn’t have ultimately had any trouble in that area.
Whatever brought about it’s demise, though, OneSeason is no more after a rather surprisingly brief run.
A roundup of recent posts on the 
