Making hard games easy makes money
From The End of Free comes this report about CBS Sportsline's fantasy league profits. Sportsline fantasy league revenues grew to $10 million in the first year, after they converted the free service to fee service. If you've ever played fantasy leagues without a computer, you know the the only reasonable way to be totally up to date is to give up your day job. By automating daily standings and building trading around email-like exchange, fantasy sports sites have built real revenues.
Yahoo! fantasy sports leagues are still free in their basic form -- but they get free players to upgrade by offering real-time statistics and improved control of league metrics for various fees. This is Jerry Michalski's Law of Convenience in action. By making a game that was hard to play convenient and fun, you create value.
Posted by Mitch Ratcliffe at October 29, 2002 04:05 PM | TrackBack