quote:Originally posted by Raiders:
Greg,
two others and they will start advertising soon.
Your saying besides FFPC, there are two new start up High Stake Fantasy Football Leagues for this Year? WOW. With the fall of the AFFL...that opened up room for a contest of that size...(There are at least 4 companies trying to fill that void...including the NBC league, the FFPC, and the two mystery leagues)...unless the "screwing" turned the past AFFL players off completely to high stakes fantasy football (HSFF)...then the void would be smaller. (Removing cross over players who played WCOFF or NFFC as well as AFFL...because those players will likely keep the faith.)
Remember...even a year ago...the free market for creating these types of contests were still fearful of having to throw away $50,000 grand or so to avoid being sued.
With the CDM case winning...it has opened up the market now without having to dance through hoops and coughing up money for silly licensing agreements.
~Lance [/QUOTE]Well said Lance (well, kind of
). The barrier to entry has been eliminated with the CDM decision, which is what makes this the wild, wild West of the industry. Everybody suddenly sees the big numbers and thinks that running live events is easy. I can't imagine doing this without our company's show division or large staff, but apparently everybody now thinks that hosting these events is easy. Or maybe it was Lenny and Emil's buyout that is enticing everyone!! 
Anyway, AFFL's downfall was a model that included too many guaranteed prizes and unrealistic participation levels. At the end of the day, the signups didn't come close to the guaranteed prizes and they ran the contest anyway. As I look at some of the models out there now, I'm not sure how some folks are going to make enough money to make ends meet either. I mean, to make it in high-stakes you need volume, volume, volume. It's tough to pay the bills on one event and large guaranteed prizes.
We'll see how it plays out. Best of luck to players and game operators this year and get ready for the same type of environment next football season as well. I predicted a wild, wild West last year, but was just a year late on my prediction.