Anyone who enjoys fantasy baseball or football should be interested in FanDuel.com, a relatively new site offering short-term fantasy games for cash prizes. I was allowed to try out the system before the official launch last week. I loved it. If you think you're good at fantasy baseball and you'd like to go up against me just sign up and challenge me. This should be a lot of fun.
1. What separates FanDuel from other online fantasy sports games?
FanDuel lets us play and win in a day instead of waiting the whole season. Players can draft a new team at any time, and pitch it head-to-head against an opponent – a friend, or another FanDuel player – for real money. The player whose team has the most fantasy points at the end of the day’s games wins the cash prize.
2. Do you believe that this is the direction the fantasy sports industry is going (short-term games) or is this meant to be different from traditional Fantasy Baseball the way Texas Hang 'Em is different than Five Card Stud?
I don’t really think short term and long term fantasy games compete with each other however I do think there is a huge unmet demand for short term fantasy games. I expect that most people who start playing short term games will continue to play their existing season long game. Most fantasy players we speak to like to play in several leagues and the opportunity to pick up and play something without the season long commitment is very appealing to them.
3. Right now you offer a free game as well as $5, $10, and $25 games. Do you plan to offer higher stakes games in the future?
Yes, definitely. We are slowly introducing higher entry fee games as users demand them.
4. The TechCrunch.com article emphasizes the social media aspects of the game. Is FanDuel meant to be a social media experience with gamers communicating with each other being almost as important as the game itself?
We think player to player communication will be very important. In our previous product, Hubdub (which is a news prediction game), the community and inter-player communication was very important so we introduced commenting, forums, shouts, challenges and other ways of communicating. However we are cautious about introducing too much functionality too quickly so we are going to work with the users to see what communication tools they think will be most fun before introducing them.
5. You offer Fantasy Baseball, and Fantasy Football is lauching soon. Do you see FanDuel breaking into other Fantasy Sports such as Basketball, Golf, and Nascar?
Absolutely. After fantasy baseball and fantasy football we think that basketball and hockey will be our priorities. After that we are going to really go with where we feel there is user demand.
6. Is there a mobile phone version of the game available?
FanDuel can already be played on the iPhone however it is still a bit fiddly on the small screen. We are planning to release a mobile optimized version of the site later this year.
7. I love that you can connect to Facebook and Twitter to send out challenges. Are there plans to add Facebook-like friend lists to the site?
We definitely want our users to be able to connect with their friends more easily which is why we are planning a much deeper integration with Facebook and Twitter. We also want people to be able to connect up and challenge other players on site more easily as well and are working on some features to allow that. What we are being careful to avoid is to ask users to build a whole new friends list on FanDuel.
8. Why should anyone reading this sign up at FanDuel?
FanDuel offers a great way to show your friends and others who knows they most about fantasy baseball and football. Plus you can put your knowledge to good use by winning cash on our daily games. Remember there is no season long commitment and we even throw in a free $10 sign-up bonus when you make your first deposit.
Check out our fantasy baseball here: www.fanduel.com/fantasybaseball
I want to thank Nigel from FanDuel.com for consenting to this interview.
