October, 2010

FSB Daily 10/31: RotoWire, Pickemfirst

Sunday, October 31st, 2010

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

- RotoWire has released the first of what the company says “should be several” Android apps from it this year — the RotoWire Fantasy News Center. The app supplies news for football, baseball, hockey, college football, college basketball, golf, auto racing and soccer.

- KFFL has released a free iPhone app that features the site’s articles, player news and access to its forums.

- Another RotoWire item: The company has begun supplying fantasy content for the Huffington Post - including this item reproduced from the RotoWire “Rotosynthesis” blog.

- Pickemfirst has added the Fantasy Football Players Championship to the lineup of fantasy platforms it supports. The Web application — as noted on this site several times — allows users to instantly check the availability of athletes included they encounter in online text away from their league-management sites.

Send all of your news, job postings, stories and profile ideas to [email protected]. Follow us on Twitter (FSBcom).

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Dream11 Up for Top Asia Startup Honor

Friday, October 29th, 2010

Indian-based fantasy cricket universe Dream11.com has earned a nomination for the Red Herring Top 100 Asia Awards, which seek to recognize top technology startups.

“Dream11.com is extremely proud to be featured in the list of finalists for the Red Herring 100 Asia,” founder Harsh Jain said in the media release. “This recognition is a validation of our Fantasy Cricket concept and the business model weaved around Cricket Entertainment. The idea and the technology behind it has created outstanding growth for us and our partners in terms of revenues, new markets and new customers.”

Red Herring, a global media company focused on technology annually awards a top 100 each in North America, Europe and Asia, “celebrating the most promising companies … for leading innovation through technological revolution and creative adaption,” according to the company’s website.

Of the 2010 class in particular, Red Herring publisher and CEO Alex Vieux said: “This year was especially difficult. Despite the global economic situation, there were many great companies producing really innovative and amazing products that we had a difficult time narrowing the pool and selecting the finalists. Dream11.com shows great promise therefore deserves to be among the Finalists. Now we’re faced with the difficult task of selecting the Winners of the Top 100 Asia Award.”

The nominations cover 200 entrants. Winners will be announced at a ceremony Nov. 16.

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Namath Gains Notice for Online Ventures

Friday, October 29th, 2010

What’s going on with the retirees you know? Mall walking? Traveling? Perhaps some greeting at Wal-Mart? How many of them are embracing new media and the changing landscape of the industry in which they made their living?

Jets great Joe Namath is doing just that, and two of the most visible newspapers in the country have taken notice — including his involvement with fantasy football.

In a Friday story, Newsday dubbed Namath a “multimedia maven,” pointing to his ever-growing presence on Twitter and Facebook, his weekly appearances on Sirius XM and 1050 ESPN Radio in New York, his partnership with and role in RapidDraft Fantasy Football and, of course, his own site BroadwayJoe.tv. That outlet provides a fan environment with video messages from Namath and opportunities for the public to connect with a guy who ranked among NFL Network’s recently revealed Top 100 players of all time.

“Accepting that change is constant,” he told Newsday. “We need to understand that and not be surprised or whiny about it and say, ‘Oh, I wish it was the way it used to be. We didn’t do that. We didn’t have that.’ C’mon, get up to speed!”

Also this weekend, The Wall Street Journal will run a longer, more comprehensive piece on what Namath is up to these days — still centering on his multimedia involvement (again including fantasy).

One thing that each story points out is how much Namath is enjoying himself. As he told WSJ: “Communicating with the fans, seeing what I see and being able to say it, almost instantaneously? It’s been a lot of fun.”

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Chat: Where Does Fantasy Push Journalism?

Thursday, October 28th, 2010

To most of the folks who read this site (and those of us involved in producing it), there’s no questioning the increasingly significant role of fantasy in sports and the way they are covered. Every so often, though, we get new signs of how widely that impact is felt.

On Monday, Nov. 15, the John Curley Center for Sports Journalism (at Penn State) will host a free online chat (1 p.m. ET) to discuss the way that fantasy is affecting sports coverage in the media.

Moderated by Curley Center associate director Marie Hardin, the hourlong chat will include a pair of guys familiar to most or all of us around the industry: Nate Ravitz, deputy editor for ESPN.com fantasy sports, and FantasyGuru.com’s Joe Dolan.

Joining those two fantasy pros will be Alexandre Simon, the NHL’s senior director of digital business development, and Malcolm Moran, Curley Center director and the Knight Chair in Sports Journalism and Society.

“The continued emergence of fantasy sports influences content and prompts decisions about coverage,” the article announcing the event reads. “Fantasy sports can also pull media organizations to decide between the possibility of emerging audiences and the reality of existing consumers or production costs. Those competing agendas, changing outlooks and the implications of fantasy sports on sports journalism will be discussed.”

The session, titled “The Intersection Between Fantasy Sports and Sports Coverage: Implications for Journalists and Predictions for Media Organizations” will be available at: http://comm.psu.edu/sports/live-chats online.

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