I am sick! What a shame for all parties involved.
It reminds me of a recent murder trial where there were lies, misdirection, silence, etc.
What worries me is what happens to everyone who has paid for 2011, booked flights and hotel rooms and show up to an empty ballroom. Or worse yet, there is an event held and those not paid and not participating in that event but in others, show up and cause a riot!
What has this hobby come to?
Russ, this area of the hobby has reached its lowest level ever if a default of prizes happens as customers are saying on those boards. This will now be five major contests in the last 3-4 years that have defaulted on prizes. There's no doubt this is the one that will cause the most harm because the prize amount could equal or surpass the other four combined. That's unbelievable.However, fantasy football isn't to blame for this. The game operators are to blame. Look at each case and you can see where the fault lies. Crazy guaranteed prizes that couldn't be fulfilled. Incredibly high expenses on things that weren't needed. Guarantees that were too good to be true. It all looked so good and just for playing fantasy football. It wasn't the game that was at fault, in each case it was the game operators and their big aspirations for this space.
It's now time to get back to common sense and get this ship back in shape. If there are going to be only two game operators left in the live events space then we need to stop competing for market share and make sure there is a market left when the ashes have been put out. We need to work together to ensure that this never happens again. We need to ensure customers that our prize money is guaranteed, safe and sound, and that our guaranteed prizes can be reached and payouts will go out on time. And for consumers: It's Buyer Beware. Going forward, new entities need to have all of the safeguards in place before they earn our trust. Anybody can have grand ideas (WIN $! MILLION!!), but it's executing them that is the hard part.
Again, our hobby isn't to blame for these past transgressions. Fantasy football is still a great hobby, but those people who were left in charge of this area of the space have failed thousands and thousands of players who trusted them. The damage is severe and could be even more severe if it leads to more serious scrutiny. But now is the time to prevent this from ever happening again and saying ENOUGH IS ENOUGH. It's time for the rest of us to prevent this from ever happening again (I know we said that 2 or 3 times before). But this is crazy stupid and crazy serious in these crazy economic times. Nobody can afford this mistake, but it looks like it has happened.
Let's never let it happen again.
