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

From a Fantasy Football Guy

[illuminata]

Well, the pricing is fairly standard (good) and considering that most use Stats Inc., they can only add more perks to separate themselves from the rest of the pack. 32 teams in the Commissioner package is definitely a major perk. It makes for a much more deep, competitive game.

However, the League Manager package is coming up short since it doesn't look like it will let you run your own. Now, you might be asking if that is the same as asking for the Commissioner package for the $10 price. It is not. In most services, you can create your own league and invite people who paid the same fee as you (well, sometimes with extra fees for extra teams) and make your league public or private. The Commissioner package offers more control over how the league runs and is meant for use with your friends or coworkers. But, the ability to create your own public or private league and run it to an extent is normally standard in a package like League Manager. EA needs to recognize this shortcoming and fix it, otherwise they're taking a big dent out of their potential subscriber base.

Other than that, things look pretty normal. The prizes could be a little bit better and money leagues would be nice as well, but their name should carry them far.

On another note, an idea that would be cool (perhaps a new perk for Xbox Live gamers since it'd be hard to pull off on the PS2 as well) would be the ability to take your fantasy team and get to play it in Madden. That is assuming that they lump the defense and special teams guys (except kicker) together and they make the offensive line be determined by your quarterback. Their stat tracking has to stay very up to date as well. Anyways, have the teams clearly marked as fantasy teams and give the gamers special Xbox Live tournaments where they can duke it out with other people's fantasy teams for prizes. The link between their fantasy football packages and the video game would probably get people buying both just for that feature alone.