Utter the words "fantasy football" to any passing stranger and they will immediately think of the players who take to the fields across America every Sunday and Monday night.
Orange juice isn't just for breakfast anymore, your father's Oldsmobile is history and now fantasy football isn't just played with NFL players.
For years when sites like CBSSports.com ran college fantasy football contests they were not allowed to use the player's names. Rather you would draft "groups" like "Florida Gator QB's", "USC Running Backs", "Oklahoma Wide Receivers". And yes, while you were covered in case of late scratches or injuries, these contests lacked a "personal feel".
Recently CBS crossed the line and stood up to the NCAA and announced that they would run traditional, season long college fantasy football contests (Ref WSJ article HERE)
This decision, which has gone unchallenged by the NCAA has helped open fantasy football fans' eyes to the fact that now both days of the weekend can be spent pacing between three TV's while simultaneously tracking your line-up's production online.
Why should the NCAA challenge CBS and other college fantasy football leagues? All they do is provide even more exposure for all NCAA teams, including the smaller teams that usually garner nothing more than a box score and small paragraph in the Sunday fish wrapper.
Barely a year old, the next generation of college fantasy football has already morphed into something that A) college fans; B) fantasy football fans and; C) gamblers should all take to very quickly.
Behold, "Weekly college fantasy football". 365FantasySports.com became the first site on the web to offer weekly contests with real cash buy-ins and real cash payouts each and every weekend. "By Saturday night each week, just after the last west coast game has ended, our contests are over and our system is putting cash in the accounts of all of our players who won," quipped Neil Odze, founder of 365FantasySports.com.
Odze continued, "Just like our other daily contests there is no week-to-week point carryover and there's no roster carryover either. The rosters that you select each week are for that weekends' games only. Even within each weekend, many of our contestants can be found in multiple contests. While some contestants use the same roster in each contest, others like to mix it up."
Since so many college football fans are tend to follow just their team and their teams' conference, 365fantasysports.com has created the only games on the web that are conference specific. Every week you will find both "national" contests as well as contests for the Big Ten, Big XII, Big East, ACC, SEC and PAC-10. Odze seemed to beam just a bit when he added, "Nobody else has contests like these. Nobody."
Is this legal? Absolutely. Because of UIEGA (google it if you don't know), fantasy contests of this sort are totally within the bounds of the law. 365fantasysports is US owned and operated. Customers can make deposits and withdrawls quickly & securely with their checking account or any major credit card through Paypal. Contest buy-ins range from $6 to $110. Payouts range from $10 to $600. Your first contest is free upon registration.
Thursday, October 15, 2009
Tuesday, September 22, 2009
Where Fantasy Football Meets Sports Betting?
Don't let the headline fool you. It's not really sports betting. By definition it's still fantasy sports and according to the US Government, it's 100% legal.
Intrigued? You should be. The fantasy football industry has spawned several niches including fantasy player insurance (http://fantasysportsinsurance.com), fantasy arbitrators (http://www.sportsjudge.com) and, of course, for the league winners fantasy trophies (http://theultimatetrophy.com).
When UIEGA was passed in September '06 it was clear that the US government saw fantasy sports as contests (or games) of skill not luck. As long as fantasy contests stay within the clearly marked parameters they are 100% legal even when played with cash entry fees and awarding cash prizes to winners.
It's at sites like 365fantasysports.com where the 'sports betting' collides head-on with the fantasy world, if only on the surface. Every day contests are made available for players to enter with a set buy-in and a pre-determined payout. For example, a player may select a 2 team contest where the buy in is $22. The winner would collect $40. The same 10% "commission" or "fee" that sports bettors are oh so familiar with is mirrored in these contests as well.
You may be scratching your head at this point as you ponder how you can possibly get everyone together every day to draft a roster and wouldn't that get just a little bit tedious after a while? Sure, draft night is undoubtedly one of the best nights of the year and having a couple of them every late summer is fun but I wouldn't want to do it every night.
Fear not having to wait for everyone to get together to select your roster. At 365fantasysports.com you can draft your team whenever you wish. Once you select a contest you may begin choosing your players immediately. It's possible that you and your competitors may have some players in common, but, the likelihood of having identical rosters is very slim.
Founder of 365FantasySports.com Neil Odze had this to say, "We wanted to build a site with contests that would require very little time for our players to enter and select their rosters. One of the only complaints about traditional fantasy sports is that it takes up too much time. You can be in and done with one of our contests in just a few minutes."
The other factor that is very appealing about "daily" fantasy vs traditional fantasy is the payouts. Odze added, "Winnings get transferred to our contestants accounts every day as opposed to at the end of the season. That's why it looks and feels like sports betting even though by legal definition its not."
Daily fantasy contests will appeal to a very wide range of participants from fantasy experts and newbies to the gambling type who enjoy hitting the sports books in Vegas. "We even have a decent number of poker players on the site", said Odze, "I think they find our contest lobby to be very similar to what they see on many of the online poker sites."
With 30 million people in the US participating in some form of fantasy sports combined with the "microwave", "I-want-it-now" lifestyle that we've all grown to love, there's little doubt that the daily fantasy marketplace will be thriving sooner rather than later.
Odze concluded with the fact that, "Most traditional fantasy participants don't know that daily fantasy contests even exist. But from what we've seen from the contestants that have found us so far, once they discover it, they really like it."
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Posts
