Screaming Sports Blog

MLBPA loses fantasy sports lawsuit (thankfully!)

In a huge win for the Fantasy Sports industry  the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals panel, in a 2-1 decision, ruled that CBC Distribution and Marketing Inc. (CDM Sports) doesn't have to pay licensing fees to MLB for using players names in the fantasy sports games it produces.  The full text of the article is at ESPN. 

This has been an ongoing issue for the two years I have been involved with the industry.  As a member of the Fantasy Sports Trade Association (FSTA), I attend the twice a year conferences in Las Vegas and there is always at least one panel with the lawyers talking about the CDM lawsuit.  Basically the MLBPA claimed that any fantasy sports company had to license the right to use players names and statistics for any fantasy sports game.  CDM, and the entire industry, contended that this was publicly available information and that the MLBPA had no rights to force CDM to license that information.

Well, in my opinion (I am a lawyer by training, so a little qualified to render an opinion here) MLBPA was WAY out of bounds and acting in a typically overreaching manner by training to force fantasy players to license.  They contended that the players have a "Right of Publicity" and that fantasy sports appropriate players names and statistics for commercial gain.   CDM contended that this is publicly available information and thus no "right of Publicity" exists, that the information is not being used as any form of endorsement and that the first amendment precludes any rights claimed by MLBPA.

The FSTA even hired Wilson, Sonsini, one of the top law firms in Silicon Valley to file what is called an Amicus Brief on behalf of the industry.  We all had a lot riding on this, and as outrageous as the MLBPA claims were, a loss would cripple the industry and give the pro league unions a monopoly on fantasy sports. 

Well, the MLBPA has gotten spanked twice in court now.  The first time the judge dismissed the lawsuit on all counts by Summary Judgment. That basically means (for those of you who don't watch Boston Legal) that she refused to even HEAR the case because the claims were so worthless.  The Appeals Court basically backed her up and said "Tough luck" to MLBPA.

So we can all breath a bit easier now and know that our beloved fantasy games are, for the moment, safe from the clutches of the professional sports unions.  I mean these guys don't make enough money without once again screwing the guys who support them?  Bad enough I have to eat $ 6 hot dogs and $ 8 beers at a game.  Now you want a piece of my fantasy team?

Justice is served.

Alec

ScreamingSports.com Fantasy Football Game on Facebook

We launched a fantasy football salary cap game on Facebook last week.

Check out the application here

It is our first Facebook application, which we launched with RockYou and My Fantasy league.  RockYou handles promotion and advertising, and My Fantasy League is the salary cap game engine we use.  Both are great partners and we are excited about the possibilities. We decided to deploy this app less than a month ago, so partnering with pros like My Fantasy League was essential.  We already have a relationship with them and use their APIs to hook into their system for ScreamingSports.com, so we used their back end and developed the Facebook front end to work with their APIs.  They are great guys to work with.  Much thanks to Kevin over there.

With our Facebook Salary Cap Game we try to emulate the NFL. You get a $100 million salary cap and buy and sell players each week based on their performance.  These games are easy to play and so are great for the Facebook audience.  Expect to see a lot of this type of game in the future as well as Pick 'em games and prediction engines.  We already have competitors in the Facebook Fantasy SportsGame space, but I think in the long run, our product, and our relationship with RockYou, will win out.

We want to create a new way for fantasy players to play their games.  Rather than having to go to a separate site, we want them to be able to play on Facebook and against the entire Facebook sports community.  We think there is a lot of potential here and we are launching Fantasy Sports Dashboard on Facebook next week.  Then, you won't ever have to leave Facebook to play fantasy sports or to manage your teams anywhere they may be.

Try out the game and give us your feedback!

Social networking and sports

Sometime ago, in a land far, far away, a guy named Tom changed the way we interact on-line. He took a very simple idea: Create a space where people can come and develop an identity all there own and gave them the tools to share that identity. Then he gave them the room to grow that identity and gave them access to others who are doing the same for FREE! Wow. Thanks Tom. Thanks for MySpace.

Now it is a global online nation, with a population that would make it a G8 member, if it were an actual country. You would be hard pressed to find a person with the most rudimentary knowledge of the web, without a MySpace page. It has become the ticket for entry into the collective minds of the wired age. The new pick up joint, the new cafe, the new church, the new record label, the new fake ID, the new yearbook, the new marketplace, the new police station, the new me, you and us.

Above all it has become the way that social network patrons get, share, steal (borrow) and form ideas about nearly everything. All of the real news, celebrity gossip, products and services that make social networking so rich with content, have turned it into a new media outlet.

MySpace.com and others are about one thing: identity. A place to be as individual as your mind will let you. This is the formula for the success of most social networks. Give people a place to be unique, ambiguous and different. Then put them all together… I must admit, it’s brilliant!

Because I know the space (I work in it), I can relate to the power of being yourself and getting thousands of others to acknowledge that.

However, there is a new type of Social networking. Sports Social Networking.

Not a revolutionary idea to target a sports fan base. They are loyal, vocal and opinionated. The difference in this niche is whose identity it is.  Sports fans aren't interested in pushing themselves, their music, their photos and their obnoxious MySpace backgrounds. With sports we do not need individualism. We are fans of specific teams and players and we want you to know who we love and how much we love them.  That is why we usually don't put OUR name on the back of our football jersey, but we proudly wear the jersey of our favorite player.  As sport enthusiasts, we want a community of people dedicated to the same sport, team and player. We get our unique identity from identifying with others. Strange as it may seem, the power of sports is the ability to bring people together on common ground.

So sports social networking is fundamentally different.  So is ScreamingSports.  More on us later....

Company Braves Outing.

Hey All!

On Sunday the Company decided to get everyone together and head to the Ted. So we put on our Sunday best (Screaming Sports T-shirts) and met at the Chop House.

The Ted has always been a place to see and be seen. People watching and getting watched is almost a spectator sport in Atlanta. During the summer a Braves home game is no exception. We certainly enjoyed the beer, the dogs, the dudes and dolls!

However we we're a little dismayed at the outcome. We are ALL rabid Brave fans. The Bravos fought hard and lost late. We did have a chance to see one the most unreal layout catches ever. You can see pictures of that play on the photo page.

We met a ton of great folks at the game. If one of them was you, please register at Screaming Sports.com, send an email (founders@screamingsports.com) and show us your t-shirt at any sporting event you attend. We will have a weekly photo journal of those pics. During the NFL season we will have contest for the best photo with great prizes.

Thanks Again.

Screaming Sports Team

Check out the photos to see Alec, Shawn, Carson, Stephen,Bryan, Won, Ashley, Lenka, Dave and Vinny. And special thanks to our friend Dave from the Marietta Daily Journal for all the great pics. We will be using him again...for sure!

We've launched our company blog!

Hey y'all!  (as we say down here in Atlanta). 

Of course I am from New York, yes a die hard Mets/Giants/Knicks/Rangers fan, and so saying "y'all" sounds funny to me too.

Well, many of you are here after a year with us on FSDashboard and you have changed over to a Screaming Sports account.  Screaming Sports, our new site, which integrates FSDashboard into it, is meant to aggregate even more of what you do online into one web site.  We hope it saves you time and helps you win more.

So who is Screaming Sports?  Well, Shawn Haynie, my co-founder and CTO built the first version of FSDashboard three years ago as a way to help him manage all his fantasy teams from different sites.  He got all the guys in his league using it and they loved it.  So he approached me in October of 2005, as I had left the last company I founded, Marketworks, and was working on developing my next venture.  Being a technologist (he was my lead architect at Marketworks), he didn't know how to build a company around his technology.  That was cool, because I can't code to save my life, but know about start-ups!

We launched Version 2 of FSDashboard last year and had about 1,000 beta users during football season and it went very well.  We then got funded by Mangrove Partners out of Luxembourg, the VC that backed Skype, and who I have known for a few years.  They are great guys and we love having them as part of the team because they really do add value.  Last month we launched our ScreamingSports beta and here we are!

We love feedback.  Having a site issue?  Email bugs@screamingsports.com.   Think something about our site is confusing?  Email feedback@screamingsports.com and tell us what you think needs work. Want to help us grow and dominate the fantasy universe?  Email us at founders@screamingsports.com and learn about our special program where you can be part of our team doing the stuff you normally do.

So tell us how we can be a better fantasy sports site and what you need to make your fantasy football season better.  Thanks for the support!

Alec Peters
CEO
ScreamingSports

Screaming Sports Blog is Live!

Welcome to the official Screaming Sports site blog.