February, 2011

FSB Daily 2/28: LeagueSafe, FS4Kids, RotoExperts, Picktainment

Monday, February 28th, 2011

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

- LeagueSafe.com is looking to fill two full-time positions: a customer experience manager and a financial administrator, both to be on-site in Minnesota.

- Fantasy Sports 4 Kids recently partnered with the Children’s Brain Tumor Foundation to raise money to help children afflicted with cancer.

- RotoExperts recently added fantasy veteran David Gonos to the staff. Gonos was most recently aligned with OPEN Sports and was once a CBS colleague of RotoExperts managing director Scott Engel.

- Forbes.com blogger Michael Humphrey has more info about Picktainment — the Oscar-games engine — and the role that Mark Zuckerberg’s sister Randi played in its creation.

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FSB Daily 2/24: Sirius XM, RotoWire, Emma Bianchi, Picktainment

Thursday, February 24th, 2011

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

- Sirius XM has held on to hosts Ray Flowers and Kyle Elfrink of the Fanball Fantasy Drive show, which is now called Sirius XM Fantasy Drive. Flowers, the creator of BaseballGuys.com, has also joined RotoWire as a contributing writer.

- From the recent Herald-News obituary of 86-year-old Emma Bianchi of Joliet, Ill.: “When Emma died Dec. 11 at the age of 86, the family lost a diehard fantasy football player. Eleven years ago, Laureen’s then-sixth grade son started a fantasy football team and asked Emma to join it. At first, Emma didn’t quite understand the logistics and selected her players based on ‘He’s got such a nice German name,’ or ‘He works so hard for his community.’” We can only guess that she also loved David Hasselhoff.

- With the Academy Awards coming up this weekend, here’s a plug for the fantasy-style games of Picktainment, which changed its name from AwardsPicks.com with the addition of games for American Idol and Dancing with the Stars.

- Steve Gardner of USA Today passes along and builds off another blogger’s pondering of whether the rise of the machines will consume fantasy sports analysis.

- You’ve probably already seen this, since it was reported by Sports Business Journal and passed along by Pro Football Talk. It’s worth noting that EA Sports will be getting a break on its rights fees for 2011 as a result of the labor strife, in exchange for a one-year extension to their deal through 2013. One has to wonder if a similar deal is available to any of the many others who pay annual rights fees.

- SI.com’s Joe Lemire recently offered an ode to Strat-O-Matic baseball for this year’s 50th anniversary.

- This agent blogger ponders the impact that Bloomberg’s foray into baseball statistical analysis — to which 17 MLB teams now subscribe — may have on player contract negotiations.

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

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FSB Daily 2/23: RotoExperts, Bloomberg, Accuscore, Wainwright

Wednesday, February 23rd, 2011

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

- David Hersh, who formerly served as vice president of fantasy sports for CBS Sportsline after coming over in the Commissioner.com acquisition, has joined RotoExperts as a senior adviser.

- In conjunction with MLB.com, Bloomberg Sports has rolled out the second season of its Front Office product of fantasy baseball tools, which it promises will be easier for consumers to use.

- You Digital Media has reached a deal with Accuscore that will allow the latter to create and present video representations of its data sets. (If you know just what that means without reading more, you’re smarter than I.)

- We don’t do player-news stuff in this space, but I thought it worth lamenting that we haven’t even reached the starting of spring-training games and already a fantasy ace seems on his way to Tommy John surgery. Consider Adam Wainwright the latest argument in favor of drafting as close to the season as possible.

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

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OPEN Sports Closed

Sunday, February 20th, 2011

First, the news, for those who haven’t heard it: OPEN Sports is apparently no longer operating. Navigating to OpenSports.com will deliver you to a Network Solutions “under construction” page. Attempting to visit FantasyLive.com, which OPEN Sports rolled out for the start of football season, won’t take you anywhere.

Many of our readers are probably already aware of this development, and we have been as well since last month. Frankly, there are two reasons that FSB.com has not mentioned the change at OPEN before now:

1) At the time we found out, it appeared that the situation had reached this point long enough prior that many within the fantasy sports industry knew. It seemed like one of those things that we failed to notice in the crunch of football season.

2) We haven’t been able to track down any specific information on what transpired.

OPEN Sports drew immediate attention because it was created by Sportsline founder Mike Levy. It further made a splash by landing a deal to provide fantasy games for FOXSports.com.

FSB.com has yet to inquire with FOX about its plans for 2011 fantasy baseball, and a message on the site’s landing page for that game (as of Sunday night) says: “We are currently preparing FOX Fantasy Baseball for the 2011 season. Please check back in mid-February to join or create a league.”

This update comes as a result of the trickle of e-mails we’ve been receiving over the past month as more fantasy folks become aware of the OPEN situation. We’ll share any further information that might become available.

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