Open Source » Blog Archive » The Price of Fantasy

The Price of Fantasy

Aired, Shows | david, May 22nd, 2006

Recorded

Mon, May 22

Click to Listen to the Show (24 MB MP3)

56, .406, 755 — baseball’s record hit streak, batting average, and home run total: numbers at the intersection of history, myth, memory and, now, at the heart of a lawsuit between ball players and their fantasy fans. Because from these numbers has grown a side business: fantasy baseball now makes an estimated $1 billion a year.

Fantasy baseball is the logical middle-aged move from armchair quarterback to armchair general manager. Once you realize that you’ll never be able to hit — or pitch, for that matter — a 95 mile-an-hour fastball, once even the childhood fantasy of being able to do so seems remote, suddenly the prospect of maneuvering the people who can — buying and trading real major leaguers in an imaginary baseball universe — is better than nothing. Six million people seem to think so.

Fantasy baseball only works because companies provide their customers with real names and real numbers: Albert Pujols and his 20 home runs, Pedro Martinez and his 70 strikeouts. (Every good fantasy relies on a dose of reality, it seems.)

The case reaching U.S. District Court in September was brought by the fantasy sports company CBC, which is asserting it doesn’t need to acquire licensing rights in order to use those names and numbers. This is pure public domain information, this is history, this is our national right, CBC argues. Major League Baseball and the Player’s Association disagree. This case is not about ownership of stats, MLB lawyers point out; it’s about the right of publicity. If you’re going to make money from our players’ names and achievements, you’re going to have to get permission. And you’re going to have to pay.

The debate expands quickly past a first set of questions about home runs and ERA. When does performance become identity? Who owns a celebrity’s personal persona? And, in the end, what are the commercial boundaries of fantasy?

Gary Gillette

Editor, The 2006 ESPN Baseball Encyclopedia
Columnist, ESPN.com’s MLB Insider
Co-Chair, SABR Business of Baseball Committee

Charlie Wiegert

Executive Vice President and co-founder, CDM Fantasy Sports

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18 Responses to “The Price of Fantasy”

thomas Says:
May 22nd, 2006 at 4:48 pm
Bill Simmons, a columnist for ESPN’s Page 2, would be the BEST person to talk to in the journalistic world. He’s a Boston native and writes in the tone of blog from a fan’s perspective. He actually keeps four or five fantasy teams going at a time.

Rabid sports fans all have one thing in common: they all love to compete. And when they can no longer physically do so, it seems to filter into other areas. You see this all the time with professional athletes and gambling,

The friends I have who play fantasy sports religiously say they do so because it gives them a reason to care about sports they normally wouldn’t care about. Its the same reason they give for betting on every game of the NBA playoffs.

Its seems like there is a nice correlation between the success of Fantasy Sports and the lucrative sports gambling industry.
thomas Says:
May 22nd, 2006 at 4:51 pm
Here’s a Bill Simmon’s article about trying to explain his fantasy sports obession to his wife, while envisioning a pop culture fantasy league for females. Pretty humorous.

http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/page2/story?page=simmons/060510
alokemon Says:
May 22nd, 2006 at 5:31 pm
As a huge sports fan, fantasy sports (fantasy football especially) is a great way to make all of my compulsive stat-gathering and attribute-memorizing seem useful and productive. It’s an outlet for OCD, sports-nerd fans. Also, as thomas says, it’s a way for fans to compete via sports without playing them. My friends and I have had a fantasy football league for sometime now. We have a big party the day of our draft, and it’s a lot of laughs, sure. But it’s intense and competitive too; there are decoy signals to throw off the league as to who you might select, complicated trades to swap picks, jeers for uninformed selections, etc. For us, though the players are remote, it doesn’t feel all that much like fantasy. We earnestly feel like we own the player, and his stats or production IS our production. Of course, it wouldn’t be the same if the players weren’t those at the pinnacle of their sport, but something still feels off if the MLBPA or the NFLPA want to claim “ownership” of those numbers, which are merely attributes of their players.
Black Market Kidneys Says:
May 22nd, 2006 at 5:43 pm
[...] Money (technorati) Perception (technorati) Statistics (technorati)

Coming up on one of my favorite podcasts “Open Source” 56, .406, 755 — bas [...]
Jon Garfunkel Says:
May 22nd, 2006 at 5:51 pm
whoa– missing some context here. There’s a whole universe of MLB stats-based fantasy games, no? The grand-daddy of them all is Strat-o-Matic, if I’m not mistaken– did that clear the rights with MLB when it was created forty years ago?

Or is it because CDM is now making gobs of dough? It’s not some guys playing a card game in their basement anymore. Checking out the website, I see so many dollar signs dangling in front of me it makes a Vegas casino look like an Iowa cornfield.

But then again, let’s get serious. The game ain’t “Field of Dreams” anymore. When Johnny Damon tells the press that it’s going to take more than money to lure him to NY — yeah, it took money and a kind word — and that’s just business-as-usual, I can understand why we as a society have lost our perspective on sports.

I don’t have the answer, other than to start acting like my Dad and just let the nostalgia take over. I just love the game. And I love statisitcs, but for the only reason that Tim McCarver will be wrong on at least some of them.
Jon Garfunkel Says:
May 22nd, 2006 at 6:02 pm
See also $TATS by Alan Schwarz in legal affairs last year on this case and some of the relevant precendents.

Some other key stats: 15 million Americans, $150 million industry. That’s a lot, but it still couldn’t cover the Yankees payroll.
Jon Garfunkel Says:
May 22nd, 2006 at 6:11 pm
Sorry, above, I meant “companies like CDM” (whose website I looked at). I can’t find CBC’s website.

I guess everyone is watching the Sox-Yanks preview. I can see the lights on from here across the Charles.
joel Says:
May 22nd, 2006 at 6:15 pm
Where is Stephen Jay Gould when we need him?
joel Says:
May 22nd, 2006 at 6:33 pm
I think these guys are just looking for a soft target. Otherwise why aren’t they going after the bookies.
Jon Garfunkel Says:
May 22nd, 2006 at 11:44 pm
Listened to the show now. Charlie Wiegert tended to go on for a bit in his comments, a bit Stengelesque, and needed to be interrupted.

On the other hand, baseball’s counsel Russ Jones should switch jobs with Bush’s lawyers– I can’t remember somebody doing a worse job of defending his case on this program. He went as far as claiming that game-playing wasn’t free expression protected by the first amendment.

Chris read this comment from alokemon on air: “For us, though the players are remote, it doesnâ€™t feel all that much like fantasy. We earnestly feel like we own the player, and his stats or production.” Interesting, metaphysically, but what does that have to do with the height of grass in the Fenway? Oddly enough, Jones jumped on it, saying, Look, these fantasy players feel like they own the players! And they didn’t pay for that ownership! Ha ha!

The conversation about the court case, not surprisingly, boiled down to money, which to me was a question of values, see above.

Brendan read comments from Joel and Thomas. I feel like I’m stranded on third. Oh well.

BTW, in the last two minutes of the show, some necessary background was offered by Benjamin– that “up until last year or the year before, CDM was paying a small baseball royalty for the use of the numbers.” Hmm. That would have been pertinent for the earlier discussion.
alokemon Says:
May 23rd, 2006 at 3:26 am
Just caught the show. First let me say that I probably should have chosen my words more wisely, considering the angle the show was trying to head in. By saying that it feels like we own the players, of course I know that Albert Pujols doesn’t hit his homers for me. I was just pointing out the emotional attachment we have to these players. Because we are so attached to them, we’ll read the box scores more closely, watch the highlights more attentively, read more articles about the player; in short, we’ll become even more deeply invested fans. Good for “baseball” but perhaps not good for the MLB.

Fantasy sport breeds obsession; the good fantasy players are the ones who dive in head first, and are truly swimming in the sport. (It’s important to emphasize that just because you own a certain player doesn’t mean your allegiance is just with him. If your team isn’t performing, you dig through the box scores, watch entire games for players you can acquire who can pick up the slack.) My league, again, is a case in point. When we started four or five years ago, the playing field seemed even. But one player has become the clear-cut favorite. Why? Because the fantasy sport had allure, due partially to gambling I must say. And now he reads up, consumes the numbers, digs for scouting reports, and in so doing perenially wins our league. Fantasy sport, for this player, created his obsession with the sport. He was born India, and thus, of course, had no aspirations of ever playing football or any other sport, but fantasy sport turned him into the information-crazy sports-hungry fully invested monster he now is. The leagues should be encouraging this. They should want as many rabid crazy fans out there as possible, encouraging fans to get as involved in ther game in as many ways as possible. But, as Gary Gilette said, the MLB has been shortsighted before.

I also agree with Jon Garfunkel, Russ Jones was underwhelming for his side. But Gary Gilette was right on. I had no idea of the budding world of baseball statistic mad scientists working underground, nor of the insider-outsider relationship between scouts and statisticians.

Glad to see you folks did a show on sports, though. I was trying to think of a good package including sports for a while now, but didn’t come up with anything worthy of a show suggestion. This will hold me over, probably for a week.
mrbast74 Says:
May 23rd, 2006 at 8:16 am
I’m just listening to the podcast and am surely commenting out of order.

The conversation, as I’m listening, keeps referring to fantasy baseball as inherently monetarily driven. We’ve been playing fantasy baseball from the newspaper box scores for years, free of charge. The product, to me, is not the stats, rather the method of organization and the convenience of computerized automation… not at all the stats and names associated with those stats. With a tool as simple and ubiquitous as a newspaper box score, absent the fantasy sports companies, we can continue to play and will continue to play fantasy sports ad infinitum.

MLB needs to find a new target. How about Las Vegas?
skyking162’s baseblog » Blog Archive » Radio Open Source Says:
May 23rd, 2006 at 11:09 am
[...] en to an hour of somewhat intelligent baseball talk), you can download the mp3 of the show from this page. I appeared during the third 20-minute segment with Ben Kabak of Double Play [...]
Most Valuable Network - Off the Facade - A New York Yankees column Says:
May 23rd, 2006 at 11:34 am
Wang’s lack of strike outs lead to a loss

The mystery that is Chien-Ming Wang reared his ugly head last night.
After two stellar starts during which he threw 16 innings, giving up 3 earned runs and recording 37 of 48 outs on ground balls, the ineffective Wang returned the mound in Fenway Park …
fabkebab Says:
May 25th, 2006 at 7:26 am
First time post, long time listener:

I thought this was an interesting podcast - Basically I can see the legal point being made, and perhaps it will stand up in court -

But isnt it a little sad? Once again the big money men are moving in on the small-time enthusiasts? Once again the romance of professional sports (its a love affair for most fans) is being assaulted for a few more $$$

I dont participate in fantasy baseball (I am from England and I play similar games with soccer and cricket) but my overwhelming feeling was that the whole debate doesnt leave anyone feeling good
mrbast74 Says:
May 26th, 2006 at 3:14 pm
It’s quite like Christopher said, “…the same people who brought us $10.00 beer.”
Jake Walker » Blog Archive » Who Owns Sports Statistics? Says:
June 21st, 2006 at 3:15 pm
[...] « Brilliant! Who Owns Sports Statistics? Excellent radio program on who owns sports statistics. This entry [...]
lbjay Says:
August 14th, 2006 at 12:10 pm
Was this a case of David vs. Goliath? If so, it appears David was victorious. http://www.maurybrown.com/?p=299

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