Recently in Fantasy Sports Category
My opinion of ESPN's website coverage of fantasy sports is slightly mixed. ESPN offers a great deal of fantasy sports coverage, as well as a number of free fantasy sports leagues. Both are definitely a large positive. However, the one glaring negative ESPN's web coverage of fantasy sports holds is that a lot of content offered on the site is ESPN insider exclusive, meaning that only those with an ESPN insider subscription have access to those articles and features. However, that aside the site is a fantasy fantasy sports source of information. ESPN offers coverage of fantasy football, basketball, baseball, hockey, racing as well as soccer. As well as typical coverage such as articles written by fantasy experts such as Eric Karabell and others such as Matthew Berry (formerly, as some of the other writers on ESPN are, of the talented Mr. Roto web page, which has been purchased by ESPN.), ESPN also offers podcasts that can be downloaded to your computer or iPod as well as video coverage on ESPN's web page. The site is quite easy to navigate with a number of tabs clearly marked as to what they direct surfers to on the site. ESPN also offers message boards to members of the website, which is an additional nice feature. Finally, the advertising on ESPN's fantasy sports web pages are not distracting and do little to clutter the layout of the page. All in all, ESPN has a fantastic fantasy sports website, however, it does need to be noted that some of the coverage on the site is only available to ESPN Insider subscribers.
http://games.espn.go.com/frontpage
Yahoo! now offers a very cool fantasy sports product for Yahoo! fantasy gamers.
Yahoo! Sports for TV is a product that allows fantasy sports gamers to watch their Yahoo! sports teams live scoring updates on your television while watching the games, if they have the minimum requirements. The minimum requirements for Yahoo Sports for TV are that fantasy sports gamers have a Yahoo! ID and an active fantasy league, an Media Center Extender, a Windows based PC with any of the following: Windows Media Center, Windows Vista Home Premium, Windows Vista Ultimate; a TV with video and audio input connections, TV tuner, IR Receiver and MCE remote controller. Yahoo! Sports for TV is free for those to use who have the above minimum requirements. Finally, the product is only available for fantasy baseball and fantasy football currently but is cool for those who like to watch sports and keep track of their teams. If interested in watching a commercial that illustrates how the product works check out the link below.
http://youtube.com/watch?v=6XOWSgYXNxE
To date, Rotoworld's is the most comprehensive fantasy content driven website I've visited. Rotoworld covers MLB, NBA, NHL, NASCAR, Golf, and college football. The site also features 3 blogs, one for football, baseball and hockey. Rotoworld also has a fantasy forum where users registered to the site can make posts that relate to a variety of threads. Though Rotoworld doesn't offer their own fantasy sports leagues, they have a variety of links and ads to sites that do offer fantasy leagues, making it easy for enthusiasts to find a site to register and play fantasy sports in. Rotoworld's page layout isn't flashy, but with constantly updated information posted on the front page, tabs listed dividing the site according to different sports along the top, a player search bar posted in the upper right hand corner of the page, and various sports headlines running down the right hand side of the page, the layout is quite efficient and easy to navigate. There are also very few ads on the website, and the majority of the ads are related to other fantasy sports websites, making them quite useful. More impressive then the efficient page layout, and the ease of navigation is the sheer volume of fantasy content and how all of the content seems to be constantly updated. For hardcore fantasy gamers, up to date information can be the difference between finishing in the middle of the league standings and a championship. All in all, rotoworld is a phenomenal site for fantasy sports content, and a must visit for serious fantasy gamers, and even casual gamers who want to gain an edge on their competition. Check the site out here...
http://rotoworld.com/default.aspx
The fantasy sports coverage on AOL was definitely much weaker then I expected. AOL's main fantasy sports page currently is only covering fantasy football. With football being the most popular fantasy sport taking place currently, AOL certainly should have most of its content focused on it. However, it is disappointing for fantasy basketball owners and hockey owners a like that no coverage is focused on basketball or hockey. The page layout is also quite weak for AOL fantasy sports. The page contains a large number of ads that clutter the page as well as a great deal of lead text and few, small pictures for each of the articles. The amount of text and ads on the fantasy sports page makes for a bland and boring layout. With all the bad aspects of AOL's fantasy sports coverage being noted, it is also important to note the good aspects of AOL's fantasy sports page. AOL fantasy sports offers fantasy football for free with both public and custom leagues. AOL's fantasy page also has an interactive weekly poll for fantasy gamers to vote on which player they believe will have the best fantasy week at a specific position. With such little fantasy content, AOL Fantasy sports page is certainly not a must visit site, my recommendation is to visit one of the other fantasy web sites previously critiqued.
http://sports.aol.com/fantasy/
As mentioned in Professor Han's info tech class last week, a lawsuit was brought by MLB to control fantasy leagues. MLB argued that other companies were illegally providing web users with player statistics thus infringing on players right of publicity and profiting from unlicensed material. MLB wanted the fantasy leagues to license the information in similar way that a tee shirt company would license MLB logos. MLB viewed player stats as an intellectual property.
The court held that fantasy league operators have a First Amendment right to use the information (similar to viewing the stats as "news") and that its use does not cause injury to the players' ability to use their names for revenue generation.
This week I'm going to stray away from the monster fantasy sites that offer both content and fantasy leagues and take a look at a fantasy sports site that is entirely content driven. The Fantasy Cafe has a seperate fantasy sports cafe for baseball, basketball, football and hockey and also has a fantasy cafe radio. What is unique about the fantasy cafe is that all of the content is created by the sites visitors. For each of the cafe's individual sport websites, members of the fantasy cafe who write on the many message boards available are able to contribute articles to the site moderators. In order to submit articles to be published on the website however, users must agree to the terms and conditions that the site sets forth, which for the most part simply state that the work you are presenting is original and is not plagarized. Once a user submits their work to a seperate message board for cafe writers, other writers for the web site begin editing the article and make suggestions to improve the strength of the content being presented. After the article is edited, the site moderators decide on a handful of articles to post on the site's homepage. In addition to the original content users create for the individual cafe sports home pages, there are a variety of other features that appeal to users. The cafe offers a poll on each sports page for users to vote on, and also offers such common features as player rankings and sleeper articles. The cafe also has a number of links to other fantasy sites such as Yahoo!, Cbssportsline, ESPN, etc. Finally, the best feature of the Fantasy cafe is its wide variety of message boards which can be easily accessed by clicking on the froums link on the cafe's homepages. The message boards have many different forums including start and sit, player updates, game commentary, trade and keeper league advice, etc. Because of the wide variety of forums, users can find just about any meaningful fantasy information they could want, whether it be advice about what players to add off of waivers or what minor league baseball player may be called up and have a significant impact. Another impressive thing about the cafe is that the advertisements found in a variety of places on the homepage do not make using the site anymore difficult. The choice of advertisers on the site is also solid, as most of the advertisers are sites that offer fantasy sports leagues, such as Cbssportsline, or offer sports goods and memorabilia. Overall, the Fantasy Cafe is a great content driven fantasy sports website that I personally visit just about every day.
CBSsportsline is a very popular fantasy sports website amongst fantasy gamers. CBS offers a large variety of fantasy sports. They offer the standard fantasy football, basketball, baseball, hockey for the professional level, but also offer a handful of more unique games such as NCAA fantasy football. CBS offers free games fantasy games. Unfortunately for gamers in the free leagues, it appears that scoring options are not adjustable and gamers must use the default scoring options in the free leagues. Gamers who choose to play in the free leagues do get free live scoring updates all season long. Also, CBS offers pay-for leagues in which the league scoring options can be adjusted and other options such as keepers are also available. CBS has a variety of fantasy commentary both in text form in video form on the fantasy sports home page. The site is relatively easy to navigate with tabs for the different fantasy sports near the top of the page. There are almost no ads on the home page, with the only noticable one before for Google in the upper right hand corner near the search feature on the website. Another nice feature on the fantasy sports home page is a listing of all the leagues an owner competes in found in the upper right hand corner of the page. Setting rosters and taking care of other managerial moves such as adding free agents or viewing other rosters to offer trades is made easy with tabs and options listed on the roster page. The best feature for hard core fantasy sports gamers is the search option on CBS. CBS has a large list of player pages that can be found by simply searching for that player on the website. On the player card fantasy advice,both contributed by CBS writers and writers from other fantasy web sites such as rotoworld,appears in the upper right hand of the page as well as career statistics of that player on the bottom of the page. Once again, very few advertisements are found cluttering both the roster page or the player cards. Because of the ease of navigation, and the wide variety of fantasy information available, CBSsportsline is a solid fantasy sports website for competing in leagues as well as gathering fantasy advice. A link to CBS fantasy sports web site can be found at the bottom of this page.
http://www.sportsline.com/fantasy
Fantasy sports gamers understand the value of gathering all the information they can on the players they own before setting their lineups. For that reason, it is important to be informed about the quality of the fantasy sports web sites and the information they present. In the first installment of my weekly article critiquing fantasy sports websites I am going to look at Yahoo! and their fantasy sports section. Yahoo! fantasy sports is one of the most populated fantasy sports league web sites on the internet. Yahoo! is well known for their free fantasy sports leagues, an idea that other sites such as ESPN have started to follow in recent years. In all of Yahoo's fantasy sports leagues, it is quite easy to set rosters, find tabs for viewing free agents, proposing trades and other common actions fantasy owners make. Yahoo! has also added a new "drag and drop" options for setting rosters, while still offering the classic drop tab next to each player. Yahoo! has also beefed up the amount and ease of accessing statistics of players, and other such important information as pitching matchups for hitters in fantasy baseball for example. Yahoo! offers a variety of pay-for information and stat computing services such as their Stat Tracker service and pre-draft ranking service. As well as the layout of Yahoo's fantasy sports leagues pages being quite practical, they also are relatively solid in appearance. The pages in fantasy baseball feature a baseball diamond in the top banner of the site, and in fantasy football the top banner features the fifty yard line on the football field. Yahoo! also features ads in the upper right hand corner of the league page and the lower right hand corner of the team roster page. Yahoo! also creatively inserts advertisements for other fantasy sport leagues they offer on both the league page and roster page. This year in fantasy football, Yahoo! has a variety of sponsors including Toyota, Coca-Cola, Heineken and Sprint. Even with these advertisers, Yahoo! has not cluttered the pages making it difficult for users to navigate the pages or set rosters. For those fantasy sports participants who don't care to use Yahoo's standard scoring, league commissioners can adjust scoring options in a large variety of ways to cater to that individual league's needs. Finally, as well as offering one of the best sites for participating in fantasy sports leagues, Yahoo! also offers a great variety of "expert" fantasy advice both in article format, written by writers such as Brandon Funston, Andy Behrens and Brad Evans, as well as through video and online fantasy sports programs such as Sunday's fantasy football program, Fantasy Football Live, that airs from noon ET to 1 PM ET. The ease of navigating Yahoo's fantasy sports pages, the variety of options in scoring available to leagues, and the amount of fantasy sports content available, makes Yahoo! one of the best fantasy sports sites on the internet. For those interested in viewing Yahoo's fantasy sports page, a link can be found at the bottom of this article.
MLB has really started up a problem that will only result in hurting their image and fan support in the future. Millions of people watch baseball and now more then ever people are attending games. People are finding refuge in fantasy leagues all over to root for a certain player even if their team is not doing so well. I'm a big baseball fan and I find myself watching more baseball then ever because of the players that are on my fantasy team. If baseball wins this case then they will lose a lot of fan support because with new looming performance enhancing drugs allegations this is something the MLB should just walk away from because it will only put them in a deeper hole then they are already in
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"Attorneys representing Major League Baseball argued Thursday that online fantasy baseball companies cannot operate without paying license fees to MLB to compensate players for the use of their names.
A federal appeals panel of three judges seemed skeptical that MLB could take financial control of a game that uses publicly available statistics and widely known names of players.
"MLB is like a public religion. Everyone knows (the players') names and what they look like," said U.S. Judge Morris Arnold. "This is just part of being an American, isn't it?"
MLB's lawyer Virginia Seitz said online fantasy games exploit players by effectively turning them into game pieces and using their names to draw more customers.
"There's no way of escaping the fact that players' names are on the product," Seitz said.
Major League Baseball is appealing a lower court judgment last year that ruled St. Louis-based CBC Distribution and Marketing Inc. does not have to pay licensing fees for MLB players' names and statistics as fodder for online fantasy league games.
The fantasy league industry generates more than $1.5 billion annually and millions participate. Big media companies like Yahoo, ESPN and CBS pay MLB millions in annual fees to operate online fantasy leagues."
A key issue in Thursday's arguments was the publicity rights of MLB players. Seitz argued that fantasy leagues are similar to a company that steals a player's image to sell T-shirts, coffee cups or posters. Without using the players' names, fantasy leagues would be an unprofitable practice of statistics crunching, she said.
