Monday, January 16, 2006
Fantasy Players May Get Beaned
Operating fantasy baseball, football and basketball leagues can be extremely lucrative for online entrepreneurs as well as exciting greater fan interest. However, the knuckleheads at Major League Baseball say the stats that fanatics live by must be licensed, and an upcoming trial could force fantasy league owners to pay fees to MLB.According to CNN (as found here, MLB says anyone wanting to reproduce stats has to pay them royalties.
Companies such as Stats, Inc. have been licensing data to fantasy leagues, but depending on the outcome of the trial, all roads may have to lead back to MLB.
Come on Bud et al, data just wants to be free! Baseball is trying to extract a few extra dollars at the expense of infuriating the guys (mostly) who feed their revenue by watching the games in person and on TV, and through buying books and merchandise.
This is extremely short sighted on the part of baseball and flies in the face of marketing principles about building loyal customers and a sense of community and excitement about a product. Call it "anti-viral marketing."
Baseball's anti-trust exemption (the only one in sports) is long overdue to be revoked. While they can charge fans to watch games, they shouldn't be able to own discussions and information about the players. Perhaps as retaliation some folks will cut into their revenue by broadcasting descriptions of the games online by doing there own play by play.
Posted By Jason Dowdell at 02:21 PM
Permanent Link: Fantasy Players May Get Beaned
| Comments (0)
Subscribe to The MarketingShift Feed