One of the most important ways to drive traffic to your online web properties is with a solid link building strategy, sometimes the strategy finds you. That is what happened with Citizen Sports. According to Search Engine Watch.com, Citizen Sports Inc. has over 60,000 links on Yahoo!.
The PROTRADE site has more than 20,000 links, and the Citizen Sports Network site has more than 40,000 links (as reported by Yahoo). And some of the links are very powerful: MLB.com, ESPN.com, Techcruch.com, code.google.com, Battelle Media, and many others.
Without their intention Citizen Sports built their strategy around establishing their web properties as authoritative on a given topic - sports. They went even further in defining that market by creating Facebook applications that were aimed at young fans with both Fantasy Sports apps and team specific apps for about 700 teams across multiple sports.
IThis campaign was designed to, and does, stand on its own. This alone deserves recognition as a truly interesting business story, where the founders had the vision to experiment with the idea, and then embrace it as fully as they did. You can think of this as a story about how a business built a new brand in today’s Web environment.
They became an authority in a certain area and the links came to them. And with links comes recognition from Google, high SEO ranking, traffic and therefore increased revenue possibilities.
Source: Social Media Link Building: From Fantasy to Reality [ Searc Engine Watch]
In October 2007 a US Federal court decided that Major League Baseball (MLB) does not own the names and statistics of its players as intellectual property. The names and statistics are factual information, not subject to copyright. As a result, the plaintiff “CBC Distribution and Marketing” (which operates a fantasy baseball league; no relation to the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation) can freely use those statistics in its operations without paying a licensing fee.
It seems that CBS Interactive wants to establish the same ruling for NFL rights. They filed a federal lawsuit to establish its right to use without charge the statistics that underlie fantasy football leagues. For years the NFL Players Association has controlled and goodly sum of money from Fantasy Sports organizations using the player names.
The lawsuit filed Wednesday in Minneapolis by the network’s online operation claims that the NFL Players Association has threatened to sue the company if it does not pay licensing fees for the statistics.
CBS seeks a court ruling saying that “the Players Association may not seek to control the use of player statistics in fantasy games and may not continue to extract money from CBS Interactive for the use of publicly available football statistics.”
OPEN Sports are doing a great job of staying in the news. I’ve covered them here and here. Now they’ve come with a great promo - Fantasy Football Commissioner Free for Life. Wow! Can’t get better than that. I have not used the service yet but am trying to convince my commissioner to use the service for our league.
As you can see from that graphic pulled off of OPEN Sports they are planning to offer an Office Pool and a game called Tackel the Pros.
“I was excited,” said Maurice Jones-Drew. “There were so many emotions running through my body after the draft. We just can’t wait to get out there and start knocking teams off.”
You can check out Video Diaries of each player’s draft at NFLPlayers.com. The site also gives fans access to exclusive player video blogs, message boards and interviews.
This is great publicity as Fox Sports continues to battle for head space with fantasy players with Yahoo! and ESPN.
“We are excited to work with the NFL PLAYERS organization to give fantasy fanatics a first-hand look at how their real-life heroes draft, trade and compete with each other in the fantasy world,” said Larry Tobin, Vice President of Product for FOX Sports Interactive. “Our open and free fantasy platform is a perfect environment in which to host this league, which will no doubt attract an incredible amount of attention from fantasy fans across the Web.”
Source: NFL PLAYERS Fantasy ‘08, the Players-Only Fantasy Football League, Launches Today on NFLPLAYERS.com, FOXSports.com on MSN [ IT News Online ]
OPEN Sports announced their lineup of sports entertainment personalities and content. The lineup will feature commentary from Sean Salisbury, Sid Rosenberg, Paul Charchian, Marc Lawrence, David Gonos, Rob Shaw and Amber Wilson.
Here are some details on the personalities roster includes:
Sean Salisbury: best known for his 12-year stint as an NFL analyst on ESPN “SportsCenter” and “NFL Live.” Salisbury will bring his no-holds barred approach to football commentary and analysis to OPEN Sports. Prior to his tenure with ESPN, he had a successful football playing career in the NFL and CFL.
Sid Rosenbergis: familiar voice to NFL fans and is well known for his radio show on WFAN (New York’s first sports talk radio station). While at WFAN, Rosenberg also provided sports commentary on “The Imus in the Morning Show.” Over the course of his career, he has also worked with such popular outlets as New York Daily News, Fox Online and “Best Damn Sports Show.”
Paul Charchian: co-founder of Fanball.com, one of the largest pure-play fantasy sites. In addition, he published more than 200 issues of Fantasy Football Weekly, making him one of the most read authors in the field. Charchian hosts a weekly fantasy sports radio show heard throughout the Midwest. He appears regularly on Fox Sports Radio and ESPN. Presently, Charchian is the chairman of the board for the Fantasy Sports Trade Association.
Marc Lawrence: professional sports handicapper for more than 35 years, having won more documented Top 10 Handicapping Achievement Awards than any other handicapper in the nation. Lawrence hosts a syndicated radio show, “Marc Lawrence Against the Spread,” which is heard on more than 100 stations nationwide.
David Gonos: fantasy sportswriting veteran that has also co-hosted weekly video segments and created experts leagues for several major sports. Gonos was a senior fantasy writer at CBSSports.com.
Rob Shaw: long-time fan of fantasy sports. A Florida area sports anchor and the creator/host of “Shports Talk,” a 30-minute fantasy TV show, Shaw is ready to share his passion and expertise.
Amber Wilson: hosted daily and weekly shows dealing with a variety of sports with an emphasis on fantasy at CBSSports.com.
“We’ve brought together a dynamic group of sports personalities that will spark discussion because they are not afraid to share their opinions,” said Mike Levy, chairman and CEO, OPEN Sports. “To showcase their talent, we’ve produced a diverse lineup of programs that sports enthusiasts will want to frequently tune in for news and knowledge.”
Sean Salisbury adds, “Being a part of OPEN Sports Network has me more excited for football season than I have ever been. We as a team will make this the best and most informative and opinionated site in sports. I’m pumped to interact with fans and have them be a huge part of OPENSports.com.”
Here’s a bit of taste to what to expect from Sean Salisbury:
Source: OPEN Sports Debuts All-Star Talent Lineup for Sports Entertainment Content [ Business Wire ]
WSJ’s Nando Di Fino is at the CBS media day getting picks from some of the CBS NFL Today crew. Check out Nando as he gets the lowdown from Jim Nantz, Boomer Esiason, Bill Cower, Dan Marino and Jason Horowitz.
CBS Sports is launching a weekly 90 minute live show called Fantasy Football Today each Sunday from 11.30am to 1.30pm ET starting September 7. The show will be aired on the Sporsline.com web property. This NFL season you can to stay glued to your computer as the countdown to the 1pm games are underway instead of having to run back and forth from the TV and computer to make roster changes as you hear updated information.
Jason Horowitz will host, he is the face of most of the original video on Sportsline.com. Horowitze will be joined by Fantasy Football Senior Writers Jamey Eisenberg and Dave Richard, who will respond to emails from viewers. There will be some segments with the cast of THE NFL TODAY on CBS Sports as well as reports from CBS Sports NFL analysts in stadiums across the league.
This is pretty groundbreaking stuff. Most of the big boys offer canned video footage but none offer an online exclusive show. It’s interesting that it’s CBS who’s making this move since they already have a TV show but in the medium they are probably 3rd behind ESPN and then Fox’s offering. It seemed obvious that this was going to happen I just guessed that it was going to be Yahoo! since they have dipped their toe several times in this sort of online live show.
Source: Fantasy Football Today On CBSSports.Com to Premier On September 7 [ Stockhouse.com ]
During the Olympics I’ve been watching some of the beach volleyball. It’s an exciting sport. The skill level is through the roof. And it doesn’t hurt that there is a fair bit of eye candy running around. It seems that the sport should be more popular.
But the challenge as with most Olympic sports is that spectators don’t really know the players so it makes it tough to really get the competitive level. Fantasy Sports would probably help in fueling the sports’ growth. Nando Di Fino of WSJ published a great article back on July and explained some of the history volleyball has recently had with Fantasy Sports -
“The sport’s most famous league, the Association of Volleyball Professionals (AVP), did have a game as recently as two years ago, but thanks to a combination of unattractive prizes, lack of relatable statistics and a set of scoring rules that one might need a windtalker to decipher, it went the way of “The Sopranos” and simply … ended.”
Another huge reason there was failure of games was the stats. Apparently, in beach volleyball the stats are not well tracked. And with any Fantasy Sports game, it’s all about the stats. The real die hard guys who are trying to win want to our stats to make their best picks - not stats = no interest.
Dennis Wagner, owner of bvbinfo.com, says -
“Blocks and aces were the only stats they were doing. The hardest part was trying to figure out the scoring.”
The AVP is now making more stats available by hiring local volleyball enthusiasts to sit at games and keep track of aces, digs, blocks, sets and hitting percentage. The other issue to consider will be the style of game as well as prizing. Should volleyball Fantasy Sports be more like rotisserie or bracket style. They should probably offer both so that they cover both the casual and hard core players.
As part of Nando Di Fino’s July article he hit the beach and got some views on volleyball and Fantasy Sports -
Source: How Fantasy Sports Could Kick-Start Volleyball [ Fantasy Sports 2.0 ]
Wow! You know Fantasy Sports is getting big when a site launches to help with those around the addicts. I didn’t know things had gotten this far. Women Against Fantasy Sports has launched to help “Fantasy Widows”. Founder Marin County blames Fantasy Sports for creating issues in her marriage. She says -
“So a little background…I am a 35 year-old mother of two girls and have been married 12 years to a Fantasy Football Junkie. Now, it didn’t always used to be like this. We had many, many years of good football times. Even though my husband and I came from different cities we still appreciated the other’s love of their teams. Hell, I even became a true EAGLES fan! I love them! Except when they are playing the 49ers…then all bets are off.
So here’s where things started to turn. It was about 4 years ago when my husband started to play Fantasy Football. At first I encouraged him (I mean heck go do SOMETHING!)… Had I known where this would lead I may have not been so eager for him to take up this new “hobby”. So the first year I think it was maybe one league that he joined…okay fine…a little irritating but it was new and he wasn’t that good at it yet.”
The main part of the site seems to be where the forum where the WAFS (Women Against Fantasy Sports) come together for support. They even have merchandise for sale (see t-shirt below).
Source: Women Against Fantasy Sports: Ladies, We’re Here for You! [ Business Wire ]
Rotohog is certainly the fantasy sports site with the most movement lately. Back in May of this year they announced the hiring of Kelly Perdew as their new CEO. Yes, the same Perdew from Donald Trump’s apprentice show. Now, they’ve just announced the launch of two new products - a League Manager and Cash Leagues for the NFL Regular Season.
They are best known for an innovative stock market-style trading floor to make a very exciting, and addictive game. And now it seems they are moving into the more traditional fantasy sports offerings. They have a ton of competition so it’ll see what their strategy will be to differentiate themselves above the crowd.
Fantasy Sports 2.0 spoke with Scott Philp, Senior VP of Business Development and Marketing, about the new offering and he explained -
“Philp described the League Manager as “best of breed”, a commissioner-style game with several features: stat-tracking, multiple divisions, options for league set ups (such as have teams of all defensive players), draft and other options. This service costs $35 and it’s worth taking a look at if you haven’t signed up for leagues yet.”
Chris Austin, Director of Marketing, in an interview on Sports Tech Now, says -
“We offer fantasy sports in baseball and football as well power fantasy games for NBA.com and several other major brands and sports leagues around the globe. We’ve also significantly expanded the content and community side recently at RotoHog.com. More sports will come online in the coming months too as we ramp up NASCAR, soccer and more.”
Source: Rotohog to Launch League Manager and Cash Leagues [ Fantasy Sports 2.0 ]
