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Fantasy media melee: News leaks AFLPA Dream Team document

DT vs SC in the Oz

The Australian newspaper has leaked a sensitive AFLPA document drawing the battle lines over fantasy footy.

The story Rivals scramble for fantasy football dollars by Simon Canning in the business section of Monday’s Australian newspaper is the first mainstream media article in what I suspect to be a long line detailing the squabbling by a large number of parties over the increasing profits to be made in fantasy football. Canning’s scoop is a document sent by the AFL Players Association to the 16 players in the Dream Team Player League, which contains some of the biggest names in the game. In addition to the figure of $1500 that is being paid to each player to spruik for Dream Team in interviews – such as Luke Hodge on the DT Talk podcast – the letter lets slip the concerns that the association and others have over the rise of Super Coach past the official DT competition in registrations, as I blogged about recently.

Let’s take a step back here. What are we fighting over? There are a large number of stakeholders in this battle and they each have their own agendas.

The AFL holds all of the copyrights, but it appears not to be involving itself in public at this stage.
The AFLPA wants to get a cut from fantasy footy for use of players’ intellectual property.
News Limited is only interested in newspaper circulation and page views, beating the absent Fairfax over the head in the marketplace.
VirtualSports (aka VaporMedia) operates both the DT and SC competitions, so it’s a Swiss banker as far as taking sides are concerned.
Champion Data provides its specially formulated ranking points to News as their Super Coach scores, but is part owned by the AFL.
Telstra pays the AFL $12 million per year for rights to exclusive Internet content, in the third year of a five year deal.
FanFooty (and its brethren) is interested in providing live stats for both DT and SC to enhance fans’ enjoyment of fantasy football.
Last but not least the fans, who are angry that they can’t get live scoring for Super Coach for reasons they don’t understand.

As you can see, we have some parties at loggerheads here. The AFLPA wants to push Dream Team because it gets no cut from Super Coach. Champion and VS get a cut from both, and are interested in both becoming bigger. Telstra is even more annoyed at News than the AFLPA because News is agitating to be given live online scoring on Superfooty, which cuts into their online turf for which they are paying top dollar. Champion Data has been instructed to restrict the flow of Super Coach scores to News, though the source of that decision is uncertain… with News firmly pointing the bone at Telstra.

News loves to push its corporate agenda through the Australian newspaper, and this article is no different. Their long-term aim is clearly to unseat Telstra from its exclusivity in the next Internet rights deal, which won’t start until 2012. Fantasy football has kind of come underneath the radar for the AFL’s Internet rights policy, and their failure to account for the rise of newspapers wanting their own online properties to benefit from fans’ insatiable demand for fantasy footy products is at the heart of this dispute. At the time of the last deal’s negotiation in 2006, Super Coach was only in its first year and lagging well behind the official Dream Team competition in registrations. Sportswear deals on Rebel Sport Catalogue.

The AFL should have foreseen, if it had done a skerrick of research, that the Australian industry was developing along British lines, not American ones. English newspapers dominate the industry with huge salary cap competitions surrounding the English Premier League. AFL Dream Team is a salary cap competition, well suited to newspapers (and mainstream media Web sites) who crave competitions with rules allowing mass entry and low barrier to enjoyment. Private draft leagues, the hallmark of the US industry, have never taken off here, with the AFL’s own Premium Dream Team private draft league product still in limbo this year after round 3, and not looking like launching with any kind of fanfare in 2009, if at all.

Some of the claims in the article, like the one that Super Coach is “like having a major natural disaster on the front page every Monday and Friday”, are perhaps a bit overblown, but that’s the way that News plays it. This is a story we’ll hear more and more about during the current AFL internet rights contract. The AFL is now in the invidious position of having got both News and Telstra riled up on this issue. It is a rod for their back of their own making.

114 Comments

114 Comments

  1. Phillip Molly Malone

    April 15, 2009 at 4:19 am

    Wow! I love it. Bad luck the Fanfooty mention is only in the Australian and not a paper people actually read! 😉

  2. UnIQuEZ

    April 15, 2009 at 4:59 am

    a mention of FanFooty in the Australian! watch the site traffic increase now!!

  3. Don Gibson

    April 15, 2009 at 7:15 am

    poor going by AFL and sundry.

    give the fans what they want and promote the game further.

    how many of us watch more games and sit on websites (like gameday live) cos we’re in supercoach etc..?

    they are making heaps off us.

  4. Resch

    April 15, 2009 at 8:13 am

    Fantasy footy was always going to be a gold mine to somebody. It is surprising the AFL have let it get into this state.

    With the amount of people more interested in Footy through it, it is possibly indirectly worth the equivalent another team in the comp to the AFL though.

    With DT Premium a dead duck the only other people I know making direct money apart from Champion and the players is Walesy from Tooserious via donations.

    My expectation is that live scores and other features will become part of a package you can pay for additional. Will not be a hurdle to playing but will provide bells and whistles. Champion have sort of done this with the Prospectus (and I would be interested in sales numbers for that) but an online version will be next

  5. Macca

    April 15, 2009 at 8:35 am

    I think the AFLPA and associated supporters of DT is going about this the wrong way. The key are the gaming rules in SC v DT and not marketing. I think DT got lazy and was trumped by SC.

    People may start of their fantasy gaming via the DT competition but I know myself that I tend to gravitate more to SC as it offers alot more for the discerning participant.

    DT is at best a SC-lite.

    I await and see the success of DT trying to gain market share through it’s marketing strategy of the “player’s game of choice”. To me a marketing strategy like this only work on homogeneous products ie products with little to no discernible differences. The marketing team would come in and create an image difference through advertisements.

    As I said above, IMO SC is superior to DT due to its scoring system. Fantasy coaches knows and prefer that and no amount of marketing going to change that reality and preference.

    DT should spend money developing a better system or swallow its pride and copy the SC system. Once copied – then add the marketing slant on it. The AFL website could then be a platform for all things DT.

    That’s my two bobs.

  6. Macca

    April 15, 2009 at 8:48 am

    here’s another quarter.

    for the more cerebral fanatsy coaches….enjoyment of this game is our psychological need for action and feedback

    we spend weeks and weeks picking our teams trying to prove how good we are…at what you might say?…at picking teams

    all the live scoring does is provide feedback to how good we were that week and the rankings provide feedback on how good we are overall

    the 20 trades we get is an acknowledgement that we are humans and humans makes mistakes…so trade away our mistakes…or so we think until injuries/suspension comes along….and the feedback cycle starts again

    action….feedback

    maybe that was a buck forty

  7. Ant

    April 15, 2009 at 9:47 am

    The AFLPA are a bunch of parasites.

  8. korza

    April 15, 2009 at 9:58 am

    Why the F##k should Hodge get $1500 to spruik up D/T.

    They should give the 15 hungy to me,i need it more.

  9. Disco (UK)

    April 15, 2009 at 10:17 am

    Resch – the trend on the internet is more and more free stuff as competition heats up.

    Macca – with the game rules, essentially, I agree. The average Joe Fantasy Footy punter would prefer to have higher scores.

    m0nty – this is turning into something from a detective movie… “you’re in too deep m0nty, watch your step or the power brokers might make you fantasy irrelevant and burn you like a trade”.

  10. Disco (UK)

    April 15, 2009 at 10:24 am

    Oh yeah, and we want live SC scores, we want it NOW!

    PS. Good to see the price of Gary Ablett is now worth more that the US Dollar!

  11. Charlie

    April 15, 2009 at 10:51 am

    The risks stem from the parties involved. After the IOC and FIFA, there are few organisations more power hungry and money focussed than the AFL and News Ltd. If either company can increase profit by 1%, no matter what the cost to the public or customers, they’ll do it.

    Aussie fantasy footy risks being a victim of its own success. Scale will bring genuine opportunities for revenue. And revenue potential will equal more contracts and licensing. The AFL dishes out these licenses and will give them to major ‘partners’ – Telstra, News Ltd etc.

    Contracts and licensing restricts freedom and access to information rather than promoting it. This means only ‘contracted’ parties will be able to use ‘AFL’ information (ie. Ch 9 not being allowed AFL vision) and certain parties will be restricted from offering information to third parties (ie. live fantasy scores being banned outside News Ltd sites).

    And once you start dealing with restrictions and rules and contracts…well the ‘unimportant’ people (such as the 200,000 people playing fantasy footy) get cut out and have to bend to the whims of the parties with the contracts (ie. shocking delays in Friday night coverage).

    Current issues with live SC scores is a small taste of the future if things keep growing. There are few certainties in life, but death, taxes and the AFL fking the public over are three.

  12. Burley

    April 15, 2009 at 12:15 pm

    I don’t really think you are right their Macca, and I know your not the only one that is of the opinion that SC is superior to DT due to their fascination with saying that the scoring system is fairer or more accurate.
    Everyone understand that DT simply favours those players who get more of the ball, regardless of what they do with it, but this is essentially the same in SC but with a premium for efficiency and a deduction for inefficiency.
    This is reflected in the fact that premium midfielders also dominate SC whilst running defenders and smaller forwards are still the best options for other positions, just like DT.
    If the SC scoring system is so accurate why don’t the likes of Presti or Merritt have the same value as say Lockyer or Drummond as they are all integral parts of their respective teams and shouldn’t this value to each team be reflected if the scoring system is as fair and accurate as you say?
    I think each game has its merits, and that’s why different people prefer each but the difference is the scoring system and that’s it, not fairness, not accuracy and not for so called footy purists.
    IMO the number of registrants has more to do with the fact that SC has had more coverage and an earlier opening (particularly in 2008) than DT. The main disappointment for me is that the team I poured many hours into for DT this year is currently around 1,000th in SC and 7,500th in DT……

  13. matt

    April 15, 2009 at 12:22 pm

    Macca Says: 8:35 am, April 15th, 2009

    I think the AFLPA and associated supporters of DT is going about this the wrong way. The key are the gaming rules in SC v DT and not marketing. I think DT got lazy and was trumped by SC.

    People may start of their fantasy gaming via the DT competition but I know myself that I tend to gravitate more to SC as it offers alot more for the discerning participant.

    DT is at best a SC-lite.

    I await and see the success of DT trying to gain market share through it’s marketing strategy of the “player’s game of choice”. To me a marketing strategy like this only work on homogeneous products ie products with little to no discernible differences. The marketing team would come in and create an image difference through advertisements.

    As I said above, IMO SC is superior to DT due to its scoring system. Fantasy coaches knows and prefer that and no amount of marketing going to change that reality and preference.

    DT should spend money developing a better system or swallow its pride and copy the SC system. Once copied – then add the marketing slant on it. The AFL website could then be a platform for all things DT.

    That’s my two bobs.

    1 2nd that

    poor going by AFL and sundry.

    give the fans what they want and promote the game further.

    how many of us watch more games and sit on websites (like gameday live) cos we’re in supercoach etc..?

    they are making heaps off us.

    I 2nd that to

  14. mitch

    April 15, 2009 at 1:21 pm

    wot the F U C is this about

  15. Jonny Hart

    April 15, 2009 at 1:25 pm

    Supercoach scoring is flukey nonsense. Depending on efficiency a player can have 20 touches one week and score 40. The next week he has has another 20 toches and scores 150. Supercoach gives the coach a false sense of ability via its inflated scoring and non-realistic salary cap.

    Dream Team salary cap is based on actual AFL salary cap. Scoring is more predictable and value changes are measured.

    I feel like I’m actually coaching a real team in Dream Team. Supercoach makes my players seem like they are part of some exaggerated cartoon.

    Don’t get me wrong, I play both. But if I win Dream Team, it will be due to tactics and research. Whereas with Supercoach, I feel it’s a bit like pluck-a-duck.

  16. lc

    April 15, 2009 at 1:32 pm

    Jonny Hart i agree – i dont do supercoach because of its crap scoring and large salary cap!

    dream team’s scoring is simple and effective and the tight salary cap adds difficulty and realism!

    DT IS BETTER!!

  17. Homer Thompson

    April 15, 2009 at 1:37 pm

    SC should just die. Plain and simple.

  18. Liam

    April 15, 2009 at 1:41 pm

    how do i find this weeks break evens ??????

  19. dylan

    April 15, 2009 at 1:43 pm

    I agree with you Jonny Hart.

    I play both but enjoy DT much more then SC.

  20. Travis

    April 15, 2009 at 1:51 pm

    Gee wouldn’t a website that offers live SC scores be popular…. Great way for a site to kick off it’s ratings.

    I hate Telstra for banning SC scores, no wonder so many people are leaving their stupid company.

    C’mon AFL stand up and listen to the fans and not the corporate morons who refuse to allow specific stats being displayed.

  21. ant.bauer

    April 15, 2009 at 1:53 pm

    DT is wholly inferior. It awards quantity and not quality, hence overrated hacks and turnover kings like Dane Swan average a lot more than champions like Chris Judd.

  22. DDT

    April 15, 2009 at 2:23 pm

    I just had a look through the teams in the Dream Team Player League – it’s interesting to see that the following players did not select themselves:
    Boomer Harvey
    Luke Hodge
    Luke Ball
    Jonathan Brown

    All four of these players dropped in price significantly after round 3… Coincidence? I don’t think so.

    I’m on to their little plan… these so-called champions of the game have tanked the first 3 rounds just so they can trade themselves in at a cheaper price down the track.

    And I thought I was obsessed with DT…

    I also noticed that Jack Watts only picked up 2 Melbourne players, both rookies (Cheney and Spencer). It’s great to see his confidence in the senior list.

  23. Graeme

    April 15, 2009 at 2:27 pm

    m0nty,

    Nice article, you neglected to mention how no SC scores effects you.

    Besides the standard “i want everyone to be able to see live scores for diffent games” line, is this cutting in to your site traffic? profits? Or is site traffic still consistent whilst not having to pay for SC scores?

  24. Shane

    April 15, 2009 at 2:27 pm

    Maybe News Limited needs to set up a website with live Supercoach scores. They are the one’s who are cleaning up on it. Stop blaming everyone else and do something about it. I’m sure they can afford to do it.

  25. Cool9

    April 15, 2009 at 2:35 pm

    The removal of live SC stats is an extremely disappointing response from the AFL, but unfortunately all too typical. Rather than improve their inferior product (DT), they try to ‘market’ (ie dupe) us into thinking DT is a better product and remove the competition from SC by blocking our access to live stats.

    Well, AFL, you can forget it. DT is not a patch on SC, which rewards the effectiveness of a player in the game rather than simply his ability to rack up numbers. I don’t care if there is never another live SC stat again, I won’t play Dream Team while Super Coach is here. But I guess this just shows the AFL is not interested in effectiveness either (ie producing a better quality product) …. just in racking up big advertising $$. Please prove me wrong AFL and restore live SC stats ASAP.

    And by the way, word of mouth is the best form of advertising. That’s how I got into SC, and how I got all my mates to ditch DT for Super coach, the better game.

  26. m0nty

    April 15, 2009 at 2:44 pm

    Graeme: FanFooty’s traffic is doing perfectly well this year without SC scores during games, up 100% over last year. In fact, their decision may be helping FF because this site is now the quickest and easiest way to find out SC scores after games.

  27. Simon

    April 15, 2009 at 2:56 pm

    You can’t help feeling that the AFL had massively under estimated the DT market place. They should also stop shunning the DT user and offer more prizes and cash. The traffic on their DT site must be absolutely huge.

  28. Macca

    April 15, 2009 at 3:12 pm

    thanks guys for the feedback

    @Burley

    I never said SC was a “fairer and accurate” system

    Fantasy football is based on statistics

    Champion Data collects a list of statistics from kicks, handballs, marks, points, goals, clangers etc.

    I am assuming that VirtualSports who run these competitions design the DT and SC competition through selecting a combination of the above data list. Both DT and SC draws data from Champion Data

    IMO the data combination presented in SC and its associated scoring system presents me and 305,249 other SC participants a more enjoyable experience that what DT is presenting.

    The SC system focus more on quality and hard disposal. DT focus on total number of possessions.

    Neither system is right or wrong. It’s about preference – and yes I do participate in both comps.

    I personally find the SC focus enhance my experience in watching the game both on TV and follow the stats on the internet.

  29. Joeballs

    April 15, 2009 at 3:14 pm

    ddt is onto something. This might be the biggest conspiracy theory since JFK and 2pac, players tanking games to buy themselves at a cheaper price. Im calling channel 9 as i speak

  30. salo7227

    April 15, 2009 at 3:16 pm

    I can’t believe just how huge Fantasy Footy has become in the last 3 or 4 years. Massive cash cow for News and the ALFPA, no wonder the lines have been drawn in the sand.

    m0nty, you must be laughing all the way to the bank mate! Good on ya! 🙂

  31. m0nty

    April 15, 2009 at 3:19 pm

    Yeah, you’d think that wouldn’t you salo… 🙂

  32. korza

    April 15, 2009 at 3:28 pm

    @DDT

    I would presume as fantasy coaches Harvey,J.Brown,Ball,and Hodge,are members of this site.

    @ Brent Harvey,DDT is correct, you are a tanking little maggot.The least you can do is put up a post when your ready to fire.

    @Hodge you should give the $1500 you scabbed to Monty to buy some razor blades.

  33. shurg123

    April 15, 2009 at 3:46 pm

    To everyone who thinks DT scoring. Is better than SC, look at the current rankings for each competition. Gary Ablett Jr., arguably the best player in the AFL, is ranked #1 in SC, and rightfully so. In DT, he is barely in the top 10. DT rewards disposals regardless of the outcome, some hack player can get 20 kicks that all go straight to the opposition and still end up with 60 points. SC reflects the true conribution a player made to the game, as opposed to who played kick-to-kick with their opponent the most.

  34. modra93

    April 15, 2009 at 3:57 pm

    making a bit of coin m0nty? 6 digits yet?

  35. Trent

    April 15, 2009 at 3:58 pm

    In the UK some Fantasy sites cost to join, they still get millions of people and the prizes offered become greater.

    I would pay a small amount to join. 200,000 teams at $10 a pop = $2 million!! not bad small additional income.

  36. m0nty

    April 15, 2009 at 4:03 pm

    ‘Fraid not modra93. Two GFCs I dislike now: Geelong Footy Club and the Global Financial Crisis. 🙁

  37. korza

    April 15, 2009 at 4:20 pm

    It seems everyone is interested in how much Monty is worth.O’kay then, lets jumble some numbers around.
    Fanfooty has 10,000 registered users.Of these,lets presume 2,500 are active and regularly visit this site at an ave of 5hrs per week.
    2500*5=12,500hrs of time to sell advertising.
    @ $20 per hour this would equate to mmmmm

    $500,000 Not bad for doing something you enjoy.Kudos to you.

  38. m0nty

    April 15, 2009 at 4:26 pm

    LOL korza, I think every one of your numbers is off there.

    For a start, though we have about 12,000 registered users, about 5000 of which logged in in the last month, our logs show we average 85,000 unique visitors per week, with well over 2 million page views per week (which doesn’t include stat updates on live score pages, btw).

    Traffic is not my problem. “Monetising” that traffic is the problem. There’s just not a lot of money in advertising budgets at the moment.

    I’ll survive though.

  39. Chris

    April 15, 2009 at 4:30 pm

    Any idea why dreamteamtalk is down? Being redirected to some bluehost.com site, maintenance?

  40. Chris

    April 15, 2009 at 4:33 pm

    PS would it help monetarily if i clicked thru some of your ad banners? Im bored at work and have exhausted all the blogs so maybe ill just click thru a few so ya get more cash

  41. ETOH

    April 15, 2009 at 4:50 pm

    Who cares about SC scores

  42. Magoo

    April 15, 2009 at 4:59 pm

    Hey Monty – can i get a job? Seriously id quit my current job in a heartbeat.

  43. m0nty

    April 15, 2009 at 5:01 pm

    No Chris, it wouldn’t help if you’re just clicking for the sake of it. Not unless you are actually in the market for an iPhone or Weight Watchers or a Betfair account, of course.

    Magoo: Not this year, at least not a paid one. Next year, who knows?

  44. DanA

    April 15, 2009 at 5:02 pm

    One of the big reasons I think SC has taken off ahead of DT is the footy fan does better in SC than DT compared to the statitician.

  45. dan

    April 15, 2009 at 5:11 pm

    Burley@ i cant believe that you compared presti and merrett to lockyer or drummond, look at both side of your arguments stats, presti is lucky if he kicks the ball 2 times a season and doesnt mark and is a renown spoiler in a contested possession which equals 0 points same goes for merrett, how many times have you seen either finding space and contributing to there teams forward movement im sure you will agree that neither are there teams playmakers down back i im guessing that you dont have either in your team, now why is that??

  46. same as last week

    April 15, 2009 at 5:12 pm

    Up here on the Gold Coast AFL is slowly getting the recognition it deserves. Brisbane’s 4 GF’s in a row and the fact that every person you meet seems to have come from Victoria have helped but it remains a rugby league heartland.

    The AFL expansion plans up here with GC17 and another possible license in sydney will meet with a heap of people that want to support the ventures but just don’t understand the intricacies of the game. So they do a fantasy team to learn a bit more and maybe even win a car.

    I can guarantee overall confusion and lack of interest if you start talking about contested possessions, clangers and hardball gets as opposed to kicks, handballs, marks and goals.

    It will be these fans that will get the most benefit out of the focus on DT rather than SC and that’s just how the movers and shakers want it. Baby steps to get hooked and then count the profit. Use your love of the game against you because they know you will always come crawling back…bringing your son and his laptop along with you.

  47. dan

    April 15, 2009 at 5:13 pm

    Burley@ i cant believe that you compared presti and merrett to lockyer and drummond, look at both sides of your arguments stats, presti is lucky if he kicks the ball 2 times a season and doesn’t mark and is a renown spoiler in a contested possession which equals 0 points same goes for merrett, how many times have you seen either finding space and contributing to there teams forward movement. Im sure you will agree that neither are there teams playmakers down back and im guessing that you dont have either in your team, now why is that?? SC is DUX

  48. dan

    April 15, 2009 at 5:26 pm

    ddt@ do you really thing that AFL players would really tank for the sake of a fantasy game??? i really hope you were joking…
    Now on to the subject i wish both forms of the game would do something to sort out there server overloads and spend the $$$ so we can all change our teams post 5pm Fri lockout!!!! as this totally hammered my rd 1 DT team lucky SC was done the day before. how hard would it be seriously?

  49. Hayden

    April 15, 2009 at 5:31 pm

    In my opinion SC is much better because DT. SC gets points on quality not quantity like DT. Monty what do you like SC or DT?

  50. Adamh

    April 15, 2009 at 5:35 pm

    Dan,

    I think what Burley was saying, is if that SC was so superior to DT then the importance of players in their respected teams would show more value in the scoring.

    Merret and Presti are team players spoiling, tackling and applying pressure. If you want to spruik superiority then you can’t be half assed.

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