Live Chat With Greg A. On Monday At 3 pm ET

Greg Ambrosius · Post by **Greg Ambrosius** » Mon Jul 19, 2010 3:56 am

Originally posted by Diesel:
Greg, strictly fantasy talk now...

Your thoughts on these "after thought" players...

Matt Jones
Harry Douglas
Leron McClain
Reggie Brown Wow Marc, these are after-thoughts. Here's my quick opinions:

Matt Jones: We all want to think that his size and athleticism and college accomplishments are worth something in 2010, but they're not. He's now just fighting for a roster spot in Cincinnati and there are four better options ahead of him. Take Jordan Shipley if you need a late round Bengal WR.

Harry Douglas: Now you might have a sleeper here Marc. He's been out for a year after having ACL surgery in August and our first look at him will be in training camp. But the little speedster showed some promise in 2008 and could be exciting if he's fully recovered from the knee injury. But lots of ifs here and in PPR leagues he probably won't get a lot of receptions, just a few big plays. But he's definitely worth a look.

LeRon McClain: He's a good blocker and I don't see his role changing this year, even though he wants the ball more. I don't see a fantasy role for him this year.

Reggie Brown: Soft, soft, soft. That's why he looks good in OTAs and disappears in games. He might be the Bucs' No. 3 wideout, but I don't want any part of him.

Greg Ambrosius · Post by **Greg Ambrosius** » Mon Jul 19, 2010 3:58 am

Originally posted by Rob B:
Greg, is the draft software going to restrict DC rosters to 26 players?

Just trying to verify that the 30 we drafted in the Trendsetters will not work and wonder if this is across the board when creating drafts using the software. I believe we will be restricted to 26 rounds with the new software. Obviously this can be adjusted later, but my goal is to get the programmers to finish what we've asked for now and get the Slow Drafts started ASAP. I think we're close and what I saw on Friday looked very, very good. We'll be drafted soon, I know it.

Money · Post by **Money** » Mon Jul 19, 2010 4:01 am

Greg,

If you were setting a KDS for yourself in a 14 team league, what would your strategy be and why?

Any tips for the newcomers on how to prepare would be helpful.

Thanks.

Greg Ambrosius · Post by **Greg Ambrosius** » Mon Jul 19, 2010 4:08 am

Originally posted by Cornfins13:
Greg,

I love the expanded locations but, signups are extremly thin.

What plan does Fanball have in place when/if these leagues don't fill? Yeah, we are still confident that we can get at least one league of each event in each city and have some fun. We are targeting each region with private emails to our past customers and inviting them to attend and we'll continue to reach out to Fanball's customers as well via email. I'm still getting a lot of emails from folks who are going to sign up later for the live drafts, but don't have the funds just yet.

If we don't fill up full leagues at every location -- which is obviously going to happen somewhere -- we will combine cities via teleconference call to form full leagues. We'll watch the totals as we hit mid August and stop signups where needed to either finish full leagues or make a perfect combination. Having one hookup of live drafters is no problem and will still work great. But we'll do everything we can to have full leagues in each city.

But we have signed contracts in each city and are going forward. The beauty about the regional drafts is that folks hopefully will make last minute decisions and drive to the drafts. It's not like they have to reserve flights well in advance. So I'm still hopeful that all of these locations will pay off and we'll do all we can to create fun drafts and a gathering the night before at the host hotels for folks to gather, drink some brews and get to know each other. I think the multiple locations is a good thing in a bad economy and it's already bringing in new customers who otherwise wouldn't be able to go to one of our other locations for the drafts.

Spread the word up in Buffalo Jeff and let's fill up those two leagues. We're close in Boston and I'm still getting good feedback about Buffalo.

Greg Ambrosius · Post by **Greg Ambrosius** » Mon Jul 19, 2010 4:24 am

Originally posted by Diesel:
Greg, I've never read so much slander about fantasy sports in my life, as I did this past pre-season...What can possibly be done so that every player, old and new, can be GUARANTEED that the high stakes contest they are joining is what they say they are? I mean, when someone places a wager in Vegas or Atlantic City, its never even a thought about whether or not they will get paid if they win. How can we, as fantasy players feel the same way with fantasy sports?

Thanks,

Marc Marc, I've been in this industry for 21 years now and what is taking place isn't anything new here nor is it anything new for a growing sector. But it still makes me sick and others sick, especially the way the businesses are acting in front of their customers.

Two great pieces of advice for all consumers: 1) Buyer Beware. And 2) if it looks too good to be true, it probably is too good to be true.

The bottom line is that while it wasn't as high-profile as it is today, fantasy businesses have struggled to pay customers' prizes in full for years. It was one of the reasons we started the Fantasy Sports Players Association in 1999. Replica Corporation was a new company that came into the industry and promised the biggest prizes with name spokesmen and big ads and for two years really tried to overtake the salary cap games. But sure enough they folded and didn't pay off their prizes and it left many of us industry veterans upset and worried that government would say enough is enough here because it had happened before with other smaller games. So we formed the FSPA to police ourselves.

Honestly, there were few instances of contests going under without paying off their prizes until recently and I was surprised at both of them. Neil Wickham tried to get too big at AFFL and after five years of paying off prizes defaulted on his prizes. His $1,000 game had no chance of making money and yet folks still jumped in trusting Neil to pay in full. The next year Fantasy Jungle seemed to fall into the same trap and ran a full season contest and even took post-season contest money without paying prizes. Those two really left a bad stain on this space and now it looks like AFFL.com has defaulted again and is still trying to come back for another year of signups. It's just mind-boggling what is going on.

And of course FFOC has a lot of similarities to the Replica Corporation as it came into the market with big backers, a plan to be the biggest fantasy game around and a long-term plan that they felt was sustainable. At the very least, I give them credit for paying all of their cash winners, but of course last year's setup was built on league prizes of free entries next year and there is no game now that next year is here. So here we are again, having three high-profile games defaulting in a matter of 3-4 years.

Honestly, the consumer is king going forward. You folks determine which contests will survive. From my perspective, it's just not that hard to create a game with reachable participation levels, a worthy prize structure, sustainable expenses and being able to turn a profit. It's just not that hard. But if you look at some of the prize pools and do the math, you know there is no way for some games to ever be profitable. And so if those games go away, nobody should be surprised later on. In some way, that was already the case with some of the other contests yet consumers are acting as if they didn't see the end result coming.

Again, YOU are king in this space. If you don't trust the owners of these games or the game operators or the prize formats and you think it's too good to be true, don't put your hard-earned money there. If enough people do that, those bad game operators will disappear without hurting anyone else. And if you see a game you can trust, support it. Simple enough.

If it looks like a duck and walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, chances are IT'S A DUCK!!

Greg Ambrosius · Post by **Greg Ambrosius** » Mon Jul 19, 2010 4:32 am

Originally posted by FAST MONEY:
Greg,

If you were setting a KDS for yourself in a 14 team league, what would your strategy be and why?

Any tips for the newcomers on how to prepare would be helpful.

Thanks. I think if you look at last year's final results, you can see that no draft spot was dominant over the others. In fact, you probably had a better chance of winning by just having Miles Austin on your team than having a favorable draft spot.

But that being said, I think many of the veterans will tell you that they look at the available players in Round 2 as closely for setting their KDS preferences as they do in Round 1. And some obviously look at 3-4 as a key for their KDS choices. I say that because some guys will plan how they will draft at the 1-2 turn at the bottom of the order and who they can get to start Round 3 and place 14, 13, 12 at the top of their preferences. Others look at the top spots and know who they would get with their first two picks and who they can still get later on.

I'm not as talented as folks who win these NFFC leagues, so I'd still probably go 1-4 and start with a stud RB. I've done enough mocks to know that I can better build a good team with a RB I feel comfortable with in the first round. I've struggled in some mocks from the back-end, mainly because I just don't feel as comfortable with all of the top WRs like others do. But that's just me.

I'd probably go: 1,2,3,4,8,9,10,14,13,12,11,7,6,5.

But that's just me. 5 and 6 seem to be tougher for me and it's thinner in the second round for me at that point. I think the Top 20 players are where I'd target if I didn't draft in the Top 4. But what the hell do I know?

mattjb · Post by **mattjb** » Mon Jul 19, 2010 4:35 am

Hi Greg

As a first year player in the online format can you give me an idea of average point totals to win the 12 team league and for the overall prize.

Thanks.

Greg Ambrosius · Post by **Greg Ambrosius** » Mon Jul 19, 2010 4:45 am

Originally posted by Diesel:
Greg, I've never read so much slander about fantasy sports in my life, as I did this past pre-season...What can possibly be done so that every player, old and new, can be GUARANTEED that the high stakes contest they are joining is what they say they are? I mean, when someone places a wager in Vegas or Atlantic City, its never even a thought about whether or not they will get paid if they win. How can we, as fantasy players feel the same way with fantasy sports?

Thanks,

Marc One thing I want to add here Marc that all players should be aware of is that the landscape for running your back-end software for these games has changed DRAMATICALLY in the last two years and newcomer games will have a very hard time competing in this space and being profitable. Anybody can compete in this space and promise big prizes, but the costs of running these games has gone up dramatically and it's a huge expense now for any game operator.

When I started the NFBC and NFFC in 2004, I had at least four very good options to choose from for a back-end provider. Krause Publications had NO chance of doing this on their own, so we did just what Lenny and Emil did previously and talked with those companies who could do "white label" games. In other words, these companies already ran commissioner products and could easily use that same software to run your game, basically putting a different cover over it to make it your own. Back then TQ Stats, Fanball, STATS and All-Star Stats bid against each other for these contracts and there were other smaller companies willing to jump in too.

But through the years, consolidation reduced the number of companies willing to do this and there just wasn't enough revenue or profit in this for others to do white-label games. So now there are fewer companies even willing to run your games and the cost of obtaining statistics is more expensive than it was in the past. Very few companies can do this on their own, so you now have a pretty big back-end bill if you want to jump in this space, a space where consumers want the highest payouts possible. The two don't mix very well.

I will say that Tom and I are VERY fortunate that Fanball bought us last year because by building our own back-end system we can now eliminate this big expense somewhat and own everything involved with our games. This allows us more flexibility as we add new features to the back-end, create our draft rooms, expand to new sports, etc. I think it's an incredible advantage we have to sustain profitability and grow this area of the business. The only other companies who will be able to do this will be the major media companies and at this point I just don't see an appetite from them to enter a space where you have a few hundred customers and profit margins in the single digits.

So going forward consumers may have less choices in this space because of the economics of what is transpiring in our industry. I think some folks have seen that take place already. And it makes it even tougher going forward for new companies to enter with the "next BIG thing."