Pay for Play?
an inside look. in the past few years, sites have started charging (sometimes exorbitantly) for access to their services. this year, the biggest site of them all, espn, has started charging for their proprietary fantasy football knowledge. back in the good old days when everything was free, you could cruise around and read any good article or report you liked. now everything is under lock and key and nobody can see shit without paying. is it fair? is it worth our hard earned money to subscribe to insider, fantasy edge, anything?
first off, let's take the issue of paying for a fantasy football service period. we started using sportsline four years ago when it was still free and just as functional. now it's essentially the same product but it comes with a price tag of one hundred and thirty dollars. split among ten owners, that's only thirteen bucks apiece. now you and i both know that a season's worth of fantasy football is worth infinitely more than thirteen bucks. but what if you play fantasy basketball too? and you also need to buy insider and all the good stuff, just to keep up in your league? the costs can add up. twenty bucks each for football and basketball (including championship jersey fees), forty bucks for espn insider, another twenty for fantasy edge, ten dollars for regular old magazines. that's about a hundred dollars a year to support a fantasy habit. it seems like a bit much, but let me tell you, it's SO worth it. where else can you get so much bang for your buck?
if cbs or espn is going to hire people to run the tech side of gathering stats, maintaining leagues, then they should charge a nominal fee. so far, i feel like $130 is fair, if it starts getting outrageous then i'll start to boycott. it's kind of a bitch but it's fair. what i am against though, is having to pay for not just espn insider but also all the special fantasy articles. if i'm paying you forty bucks already, shouldn't you give me all the "inside" stuff? obviously not. apparently, ads are not enough to support websites and this pay for content model is the next best thing. now, it's not bad in theory. i mean, if you can get a few hundred thousand people to pony up forty bucks each, why not? if i could get ten dollars from every reader of my blog, i would make a bit of money as well as having some incentive to continue blogging. sounds great doesn't it? but the money also breeds complacency. what incentive does sportsline have to keep improving their product if they already have paying customers who are accustomed to their system? my biggest complaint with some of the sites we've used is how slow they are to implement changes. my main gripe is that the statistics aren't kept through all the seasons, so that you can truly have a "franchise" league. so far we've had to do this manually, which can get to be a bit daunting.
now, do we actually need to spend any money on this hobby of ours? we can play free fantasy leagues (via yahoo, whose football offering is really quite excellent) and upgrade if we want something more custom, sounds great right? the same principle should apply to news outlets. we can stick with the normal reporting that espn does or pay a bit extra for the premium analysis. if you really want to get the down and dirty news and have the experts on your side, the way to go is by paying the fee.
i, being an expert, have yet to buy an insider's subscription or anything else. i feel like having too much knowledge can sometimes cripple you. sure a few tips can help you here and there -- and in fact, i scour the earth for knowledge when i have a tough lineup choice -- but for the most part you're on your own. the experts don't know any more than you do; if they did, they would be visitors from the future. it's impossible to accurately predict how a player will do from week to week, or which sleepers will really emerge. having too much "expert" knowledge can just turn you into another clone, listening to the same "station" that every other fantasy schlep is listening to. you don't want to overthink your decision sometimes. just go with the gut. our game of fantasy football is playing the odds and odds are, you'll be wrong. stephen jackson or tj duckett? sometimes you never know. you just gotta roll the dice and hope for the best, even though experts all seem to be higher on one player or the other.
the only reason i would order any of these products is for additonal reading material at work or something. i mean, i want some of those insider stories so bad just to have some fresh words in my head. i don't even care if it's right or not. i just want to consume everything about my team or my sport. damn the bigwigs at espn who won't let me do this for free.
first off, let's take the issue of paying for a fantasy football service period. we started using sportsline four years ago when it was still free and just as functional. now it's essentially the same product but it comes with a price tag of one hundred and thirty dollars. split among ten owners, that's only thirteen bucks apiece. now you and i both know that a season's worth of fantasy football is worth infinitely more than thirteen bucks. but what if you play fantasy basketball too? and you also need to buy insider and all the good stuff, just to keep up in your league? the costs can add up. twenty bucks each for football and basketball (including championship jersey fees), forty bucks for espn insider, another twenty for fantasy edge, ten dollars for regular old magazines. that's about a hundred dollars a year to support a fantasy habit. it seems like a bit much, but let me tell you, it's SO worth it. where else can you get so much bang for your buck?
if cbs or espn is going to hire people to run the tech side of gathering stats, maintaining leagues, then they should charge a nominal fee. so far, i feel like $130 is fair, if it starts getting outrageous then i'll start to boycott. it's kind of a bitch but it's fair. what i am against though, is having to pay for not just espn insider but also all the special fantasy articles. if i'm paying you forty bucks already, shouldn't you give me all the "inside" stuff? obviously not. apparently, ads are not enough to support websites and this pay for content model is the next best thing. now, it's not bad in theory. i mean, if you can get a few hundred thousand people to pony up forty bucks each, why not? if i could get ten dollars from every reader of my blog, i would make a bit of money as well as having some incentive to continue blogging. sounds great doesn't it? but the money also breeds complacency. what incentive does sportsline have to keep improving their product if they already have paying customers who are accustomed to their system? my biggest complaint with some of the sites we've used is how slow they are to implement changes. my main gripe is that the statistics aren't kept through all the seasons, so that you can truly have a "franchise" league. so far we've had to do this manually, which can get to be a bit daunting.
now, do we actually need to spend any money on this hobby of ours? we can play free fantasy leagues (via yahoo, whose football offering is really quite excellent) and upgrade if we want something more custom, sounds great right? the same principle should apply to news outlets. we can stick with the normal reporting that espn does or pay a bit extra for the premium analysis. if you really want to get the down and dirty news and have the experts on your side, the way to go is by paying the fee.
i, being an expert, have yet to buy an insider's subscription or anything else. i feel like having too much knowledge can sometimes cripple you. sure a few tips can help you here and there -- and in fact, i scour the earth for knowledge when i have a tough lineup choice -- but for the most part you're on your own. the experts don't know any more than you do; if they did, they would be visitors from the future. it's impossible to accurately predict how a player will do from week to week, or which sleepers will really emerge. having too much "expert" knowledge can just turn you into another clone, listening to the same "station" that every other fantasy schlep is listening to. you don't want to overthink your decision sometimes. just go with the gut. our game of fantasy football is playing the odds and odds are, you'll be wrong. stephen jackson or tj duckett? sometimes you never know. you just gotta roll the dice and hope for the best, even though experts all seem to be higher on one player or the other.
the only reason i would order any of these products is for additonal reading material at work or something. i mean, i want some of those insider stories so bad just to have some fresh words in my head. i don't even care if it's right or not. i just want to consume everything about my team or my sport. damn the bigwigs at espn who won't let me do this for free.
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