EA Sports to Kick Off Fantasy Football Website

loid_void writes "Reuters reports that EA Sports, best known for its market-leading sports video games, 'said on Wednesday it would offer paid online fantasy football for the upcoming football season. Players will be able to join a 'public league' set up by EA Sports and sports information provider STATS Inc., or use EA's online system to track their own league of up to 32 'team owners' starting July 21, a company spokeswoman said. The EA Sports Fantasy Football site sets up personalized home pages for each league to monitor real-time scores and statistics, the company said. The cost to play will be $9.99 for the public league and $99.99 for private leagues, the company said.'" Seems like the service will be similar to the well-known Yahoo! Fantasy Football website, sponsored by EA last year.

Comments

Lacks information.

[KDR_11k]

I RTFA in hope of understanding it better, but I still don't get one thing: How do the matches get played/decided? Do they match numbers and throw out a result or do you have to play Madden online or what?
Currently it seems to be some kind of MMO football manager, I never knew sports management sims had a large market in the US...

Re:Lacks information.

[MegaT]

TBH I didn't RTFA. But I'm going to guess it works like this, as fantasy football usually does. So, FYI:

Users create their own team using a budget to buy players. These players then go and play real matches in real life. The users' teams are then rated based on the performance of the chosen players. The values of these players may go up or down based on their performance. Users' teams probably score points and are ranked. Being as it's being paid for, one would assume there are prizes available for top managers.

Points are given for good play such as scoring, and deducted for fouls. At various points users can transfer players in light of new information. This would either cost points or real money.

Whether or not there is a market for sports management sims in the US, partaking in a 'Fantasy' management competition generally adds a new dimension to enjoying a sport. This is not a computer game in the conventional sense, and no doubt the participation of EA may confuse that matter in some people's minds. As such it would not necessarily appeal to gamers, but rather sports fans. Once money is involved, it is essentially glorified, overcomplicated gambling.

Re:Lacks information.

[Jane_the_Great]

You don't have the right idea. Here's how fantasy football works. All the players in the league, draft players to build their team roster. Then, once the season gets started [the real season that is, in real life] the players in the fantasy league decide which players they want to start and play on a given gameday. Stats from the actual games [again, the real life games] have point values. Say your running back runs for 100 yards, you get a certain number of points for this. But your quarterback throws two picks - you lose a certain number of points. You win the league by gaining the most points throughout the season.

Also, different fantasy leagues have different rules, different point values, et cetera but this should give you a basic overview of what's going on. EA's fantasy football operation is completely separate from any games of Madden 2005 online. And it's not really a MMO because the leagues are usually 8 teams or so, on average.