FanFooty launches

[m0nty]

Better late than never!   

FanFooty, Australia's first league-based fantasy football Web site run by a business solely devoted to fantasy sports, is now open for anyone who wants to set up a fantasy AFL-based league.

The major features are: an innovative scoring system which rewards all types of AFL players, a live draft system that runs continuously, live scoring pages, plus full commissioner features and daily email newsletters with regular long features and fantasy-flavoured player news snippets.

Yes, you will be able to play for free - but that only entitles you to play a 6-week mini-league with 5 other coaches (and the free leagues are not quite implemented just yet  ). Coaching a single team in a 10-team public league for a full season costs A$10 and a half season costs A$5. Setting yourself up as the commissioner of your own private league of 6 to 16 coaches costs A$60 for a half year and A$100 for a full year. Payment is through Paymate, which means you pay in Aussie or US dollars, and you can even use a bank account instead of a credit card if you register with them.

Sorry to spring this so close to the start of the season, for those of you who have been hanging out for an alternative to Dream Team. However, I must stress that the start of the AFL season would in no way hinder you from starting a full-season private league - you'd just take one week off the schedule if you start it next week.



The text of the official press release follows, for anyone who is interested in such things.

Press Release
Contact:
Paul Montgomery
Ph: 03 5247 0574
Mob: 0410 622 589
E: admin@fanfooty.com.au

FanFooty launch kicks off the year
that fantasy sports get serious

Geelong | Monday, 21 March, 2005 ||
A Geelong-based Internet start-up company called FanSports has launched FanFooty, the first in a series of fantasy sports Web sites which will be at the forefront of a newly-developing local online content scene in the sports sector.

FanFooty, which is online at http://www.fanfooty.com.au, is Australia’s first fully commercial league-based fantasy sports site, co-founded by journalist Paul Montgomery and programmer Tai Tran. It will be joined over the next 12 months by similar fantasy sports sites for the national competitions for soccer, basketball, cricket, tennis, rugby league and rugby union.

"2005 will be the year that fantasy sports take off," said Montgomery. "We have barely scratched the surface of the potential popularity of online fantasy sports, compared to what has happened in America and Britain. With Australia's broadband-connected population topping 1.5 million users recently, now is the time for businesses producing online local content to deliver what these users want – and what Australians want to read about is sport."

FanFooty will host a fantasy sports competition based on the performances of players from the Australian Football League. Groups of up to 16 participants can play as fantasy "coaches" in their own league with live drafts, daily feature content, instant player news updates, regular email newsletters, and live scoring updates.

Before their fantasy season starts, the coaches each draft a squad of real players to form their own “team”, and then the performances of the real players in the AFL games each week are translated into scores for their fantasy team. The coaches are pitted head-to-head each week, so that by the end of the fantasy season the coaches at the top of their league ladder compete in a finals series to determine the winner of their league.

FanFooty's system is quite unlike the AFL's "Dream Team" competition (http://afl.virtualsports.com.au). The most obvious difference is that the Dream Team is a "salary cap"-based competition where all players are entered into the same competition and all coaches can pick the same players, where in FanFooty there are a maximum of 16 coaches per league and a player can be on only one coach’s team per league.

INNOVATIVE SCORING SYSTEM
FanSports has also developed its own scoring system which it claims is superior to the Dream Team format. The FanFooty scoring system converts possessions, marks, goals, hit-outs and tackles into a single score for each player which is expressed in goals and behinds. Thus the fantasy scores in FanFooty leagues are shown in goals, behinds and points, just like the real games. The FanFooty system is built to reward players of all types.

"Because it is heavily weighted towards possessions, the Dream Team scoring system favours midfielders almost exclusively, and thus midfielders are the only type of players worth picking," said Montgomery. "The FanFooty scoring system rewards midfielders, forwards and backs in almost equal measure. We even have a special player called the 'defence' to reward the goal-stopping play of the full back and his colleagues on the back line. The diversity of scoring options across the field adds complexity to coaches' drafting choices, and makes the game far more interesting and enjoyable for footy fans."

350,000 FANTASY SPORTS PLAYERS?
Recent research from the US-based Fantasy Sports Trade Association (FSTA) suggests that there are 15 million players of fantasy sports in the US, of which 12 million play fantasy gridiron (NFL). There is no reason to think that the same ratio could not be applied to produce a potential market prediction in Australia, given our great love of sport – meaning that, given our relative numbers of broadband-connected Internet users (63 million to 1.5 million), the potential market in Australia could be as high as 350,000 users. Adding up the numbers of users of all existing Australian-based fantasy sports Web sites (somewhere under 100,000, based on FanSports' own research) reaches barely a quarter of that number, and that is without any significant marketing being done for the industry at all. Our fantasy sports products are likely to appeal primarily to the 25-49 professional male demographic, based on FSTA research.

LOCAL ONLINE SPORTING CONTENT BOOMING
FanSports is one of a number of promising locally-produced online ventures based around sporting content, such as Sportal and the newly-launched community site called Footyvoice.com.au.

"It is no secret that Australians' #1 obsession is with sport, so if any online business in a vertical sector is going to succeed in our conditions, it is going to be about sport," said Montgomery. "FanSports' business model is to study Web site concepts which have been developed, tested and succeeded elsewhere, and apply those to the Australian market specifically to sports. We will be using tried and tested business concepts, and giving them the best chance to succeed in Australian conditions."

LEGAL ISSUES
FanFooty is not being run under license from the AFL. FanSports has already engaged in correspondence with the AFL concerning the usage of their intellectual property, and has been given a list of what may or may not be used on FanFooty so as not to breach their IP rights. Following this exchange, in which the AFL primarily asserted its IP rights over its fixture, FanFooty removed references to the AFL's 2005 fixtures.

We understand that at least one other fantasy football site has also engaged in such correspondence with the AFL. We also note that the Australian Web site www.shirtlessafl.com, a site run by sports fans which hosted pictures of various AFL players, was taken down recently with a message indicating that the AFL had sent its operators a similar "cease & desist" letter.

"The exclusive Internet deal the AFL made with Telstra expires at the end of this season and we hope that, whatever happens afterwards, independent online content providers such as FanSports can operate without fear of being sued, as long as they respect the AFL's intellectual property rights," said Montgomery.


The charges to play on FanFooty will be as follows:
- free for a team in a half-season 6-team public league of 6 weeks only
- A$5 for a team in a half-season 10-team public league of up to 11 weeks
- A$10 for a team in a half-season 10-team public league of up to 22 weeks
- A$60 for a half-season private league of 6-16 coaches of up to 11 weeks
- A$100 for a full-season private league of 6-16 coaches of up to 22 weeks


ABOUT THE CO-FOUNDERS
The two co-founders of FanSports are Paul Montgomery and Tai Tran. Montgomery's background is in journalism, including a five-year stint in Sydney working on technology magazines such as PC Week and Internet World Australia during the first dot com boom. He has also worked for several Internet service providers in management and sales roles. Tran's history is as an accomplished enterprise-level programmer for large corporate clients. Together, they have formed the first business in Australia that is exclusively focused on developing the fantasy sports industry to the potential it has reached in the US and UK.