Unfortunately, the startup ecosystem for sports is nowhere near what it should be. There are a handful of companies that have been funded and two significant exits this year (Citizen Sports and Yardbarker). But there is much more room for digital innovation. Part of the issue is that the current conditions for a startup to gain traction and grow revenues in sports media are more difficult than it should be. Here are some of the reasons why.

Big Media
The top sports websites are good. Really good. ESPN, Yahoo Sports and CBS Sports all have big name journalists, comprehensive coverage and huge budgets to cover major sports events live. Combine that with the major digital upgrades by the official professional sport leagues and there is little room for an upstart to break through to the mainstream. Even when a clever blog or website is able to carve out a niche (recruiting, free agency, etc.) they often have trouble monetizing since their niche is not a large enough audience for major advertisers.

Fickle Audience
The established digital sports properties are the barometer that sports fans judge other digital experiences. Personally, I’ll try new products but if it’s not better than ESPN there’s no chance it’s going into my lineup of sports sites. (In comparison it’s not hard for a new news site to beat out the experience on Yahoo or Time). Sports fans are a digitally savvy audience with extremely high expectations. Unlike most early web adopters, sports fans have little to no tolerance to spend their time helping to develop an unfinished product. Even the biggest sports fanatics only have so much time to spend feeding their sports addiction. A new website has to replace an existing website for a sports fan. There’s too many good options for the consumer to commit to a digital product that’s not better than the status quo.

Programming Access
Sports media is driven by live games and events. Just look at the billion dollar rights deals that sports properties sign with big media companies. Most of the major stakeholders in sports are inclined to protect the value and exclusivity of these rights. Any sports startup that needs to rely on broadcast rights must come to pay with a war chest of cash to dole out. More often than not, they don’t have the capital or ability to secure the rights necessary for their web application to scale.

Official Partnerships
If a startup can’t obtain official media rights the next most valuable asset would be to work with the leagues, teams and organizations that have access to the best content. Ideally, new technology and applications could better distribute, leverage and monetize sports. But sports leagues and teams are notoriously difficult for startups to partner with (especially in digital media). The top sports leagues are often more concerned about protecting their existing relationships and investments than to take on risk or upset the current business models. The top business drivers for sports teams are media rights, advertising/sponsorship and stadium/game revenues. New digital opportunities are not always viewed as a core business unit. Teams and leagues often take the view that a company must pay their prices upfront for the right to access the value they bring in distribution, audience and brand value.

Advertising Business Model
Advertising and sponsorship is the dominant business model for sports media properties. Sports fans are used to the concept of sharing their time and attention with brands in exchange for a better or free experience. VC funded companies such as Fantasy Sports Ventures, SB Nation, Bleacher Report and Weplay all are trying to capture dollars (and thereby compete with big media) from sports marketers. Brands want aggregation, reach and confidence that they can make an impression on their targeted male audience. Traditional media companies are in better position to sell large advertising deals because of their scale and relationships. Until a startup can establish its brand and hit a critical mass, it’s difficult to consistently capture sports marketing budgets.

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There are ways to knock down these barriers and there are some promising signs in the market that this is already happening.

Professional sports teams and even the athletes themselves are getting more involved in early stage funding and development. Silver Chalice (backed by Jerry Reinsdorf), Fenway Sports Group and Steve Nash have all formed independent ventures to leverage their access, rights and relationships to invest in sports companies. These groups can help superb technology or digital products accelerate their business by giving them the inside track on promotion, access or relationships. For example, Steve Nash can help get a company a meeting with the NBA, connect them with professional athletes for PR and marketing and introduce a company to his brand sponsors.

Hopefully, more of the major organizations in sports (pro leagues, teams, rights holders) will consider adding a digital venture arm to help stimulate digital innovation. Most sports entrepreneurs would probably agree that working with leagues, teams and rights holders is challenging. These organizations view digital startups as just another vendor, licensee or potential threat. Instead, it would be interesting to see the NBA, NFL or MLBAM develop a program to support and work with digital companies to enhance the sports fan experience. Creating a more favorable environment would be welcome by the tech community as there’s no shortage of ideas, sports-crazed entrepreneurs, and potential in sports.

Right now sports startups are still the underdog. But the spread is shrinking. As any sports fan knows, if a team is hungry, tenacious and executes on a brilliant game plan the underdog can and does pull the upset.

Here is how Littyhoops sees it.

The NFL waited way too long on this issue. So they panicked. The darkest secret in professional sports is on the verge of being exposed. The sport of Football, as we know and love it today, is a death wish to the players who put their lives on the line each week they take the field.

The NFL realizes that insurmountable scientific evidence on the severity of concussions in football is now too obvious to ignore. They were trying to slow play this issue because they didn’t want to mess with the best and most popular product in sports. Heck, just last week they were trying to expand the season two additional weeks. But now they are taking a pr page from how Baseball dealt with steroids by taking a very public and aggressive stance against violent play. By doing this the league claims they value their players safety and well-being first and foremost.

This is blatent hypocricy.

The unsportsmanlike conduct here is that the NFL has built its brand on hard hits, fast-paced action, and awesome displays of power, strength and athleticism. It’s frightening and therefore exciting. It is must see TV. I often mention to people that I can imagine that a football player will one day be decapitated on the field (not sure why I think about things like this but I do). The force of a hit will be so hard that his head will pop right off.

Players have been trained to be devastating. The damage they inflict directly correlates to the accolades they receive and the dollars they earn. Duh! James Harrison just earned a $20MM dollar bonus. Sending the message that the style in which players have been trained is no longer appreciated but is now illegal is like accusing your pet cat Tom of murder for catching a mouse named Jerry.

The NFL realizes that medical advances and research studies will pack more punch than a Ronnie Lott open field helmet-to-helmet hit. The stats and studies are already out there. Watch this somewhat innocent ESPN Sports Science piece on concussions. Evidence will show that the effects of multiple concussions are far worse than what was previously understood. Add in the fact that concussions have been woefully under-diagnosed and we have ourselves a scandal. Former NFL players turn into vegtables at a young age. I would not be surprised if 5-10 players each game suffers a concussion. After all, there are over 100,000 concussions each year from football. Only a small percentage of these brain injuries are actually reported, diagnosed and treated. My neurosurgeon (yeah – it sucks to say you have a neurosurgeon) is convinced that the sport of football will not exist in its current form in the next generation as more information is revealed about the effects of concussions.

The game of football is about to experience a major transformation away from violence and towards speed, skill and more open space. It happened in Hockey. It is something that NASCAR is always managing (despite technology, cars are getting slower). This will be further accelerated by the NFL as it realizes that it can no longer conveniently ignore the damage, scrutiny and liability of the game that it sanctions. This isn’t a safety decision. It’s a business decision.

In the long run this will be a necessary evolution of a great sport. But in the now, it’s an awkward transition made at an awkward time. The NFL fumbled and everybody knows it. Shouldn’t they have figured this out in the off-season when the rules, messaging, pr, training and player communication could all be aligned with a clear plan on how the sport will move forward? I’m curious why the league panicked. Sure the league will claim they were as much in the dark as the very players that suffer from serious mental injuries. They will do everything and anything to “protect the shield” and the sanctity of the league. They need to if they want to remain the top pro sports league in the world.

This is going to get Roger Clemens ugly on a few different levels. Finger pointing, congressional hearings and more. Sound familiar? Archduke Franz Ferdinand hasn’t even been pancaked yet but the fireworks have already begun…

This week Sports Illustrated published their 2010 Fortunate 50 highest-earning American athletes and ranked Lebron as the fourth overall with total revenue of over $45 Million. Two-thirds of that revenue is generated by sponsorship and marketing deals with corporate partners that include Nike, Sprite, Glaceau VitaminWater, State Farm, Upper Deck, and McDonald’s. During the Knicks futile quest to sign James, the team presented an Interbrand report that predicted that Lebron could generate over one billion dollars during his career if he plays in New York City.

Most of Lebron James’ current deals are traditional sponsorships which typically include television commercials, promotional appearances and the marketing rights to use an athlete’s name and likeness. Digital rights are often included as part of a bundled package or as added value. Digital is not yet driving the revenue. Interbrand didn’t even bother to include digital revenue when calculating Lebron’s Billion.

This will change. In the next decade Lebron will derive substantial revenue through digital sponsorships.

Last week’s “Decision” resulted in a healthy dose of digital growth in the LeBusiness. The new LebronJames.com website and email newsletter launched. The “Decision” television special on ESPN was sponsored by Microsoft Bing in a distinctly digital sponsorship. The Lebron James Facebook page has been “liked” by 2.8MM fans. In just a few weeks on twitter @KingJames gained over 490K followers. Lebron and his marketing team were able to leverage the media coverage and fan frenzy as a catalyst to aggregate a digital audience. Now they will try to monetize it.

LebronJames.com may attract additional sponsorship as it did with Bing but with limited monthly traffic (less than 500K uniques) there is a ceiling on direct digital advertising. Lebron does have a considerably bigger audience on the major social media platforms. Twitter’s direct monetization mechanisms are still immature but popular athletes on twitter are rumored to receive $5K-$10 per sponsored tweet (via Ad.ly). Facebook pages are great promotional opportunities and have become more integral in all media campaigns. Innovative Facebook programs like Amare Stoudemire selling playoff tickets for the Suns through his own Facebook page may also be a new revenue stream in the future.

Lebron’s announcement also signaled the dawn of the individual star athlete as a media entity. Recent trends have seen professional teams create regional sports networks, and professional sports leagues create their own media businesses. Is the next evolution for individual athletes to form their own media companies?

Perhaps it’s already happening with the massive media coverage of star figures such as Tiger Woods and Lebron James. Despite critical reaction, the “Decision” drew 9.9 million viewers on ESPN. Interest in Lebron is at record highs and his new digital media platforms allows him to directly boradcast to his fans (rather than through the NBA or even the Miami Heat).

If Lebron James (or at least his brand) is looked upon as a media company the digital revenue opportunities go far beyond sponsorship. Weekly Youtube video podcasts, twitter contests, email newsletters, memorabilia sales, online auctions and e-commerce opportunities all begin to add up. It becomes conceivable that Lebron can generate an additional $10MM – $20MM per year through digital business with new sponsors or incremental dollars from current brand partners. Some of these digital opportunities don’t even need Lebron’s personal time which makes it even easier to scale. This digital revenue alone can more than makes up for the increased salary that he passed up.

I’m interested to see what happens on and off the court in Miami. If Lebron is successful at building out his own media property it’s a telling sign of a power shift in professional sports. I’m not sure how David Stern, the owners or even the fans will react. Stern didn’t seem to happy with Lebron’s “Decision”. But if Lebron, D-Wade and Bosh continue to stick together they may soon have a healthy dose of power and influence to match their ever-growing paychecks. But first, let’s see them get some rings!

The issue isn’t the content as much as how it is delivered and how quickly it becomes stale. The Super Bowl commercials are great because they are all new and fresh. But most commercials run for months with the same exact 30 second unit. Perhaps there is an argument that repetition is an effective marketing tactic. But I don’t need to re-read my Comm 101 course pack to know that annoying the crap out of people isn’t an effective marketing tactic.

Imagine somebody gave you $5MM to spend on 50 prime time 30 second content blocks over the course of 3 months with the goal to be as influential as possible. Would you really think the most efficient way to do this would be to develop one piece of content and then run it 50 times? How about running 50 pieces of content one time each?

We now live in a real-time instant gratification world where fresh content is at our finger tips through Facebook, twitter and [choose your favorite] mobile apps. Pick up a newspaper and the first thing you realize is that the news in it is one day OLD.

Now let’s analyze your average commercial

1) It’s been played on television for a few weeks or even a few months
2) Therefore, there’s a good chance you’ve already seen it multiple times
3) The concepting, development and production may very well have started over one year ago

Man, if I wanted old, lame content I would watch TV Land.

Luckily for some, there is a vast brand marketing and creative agency conspiracy brewing in which everybody just pretends that their commercials don’t suck. An amazing commercial is just one that sucks a little less than the rest of them. This is comparable to when I get together with my fat/slow/short friends and we play basketball against each other. My 17% 3-pointer percentage is impressive compared to Evanter’s broken shot or Hillman’s defense is suffocating when he is guarding Kosh. Now imagine we charged for spectators to watch us play and they paid without it ever dawning on them how inferior our game was compared to professional basketball. Am I on crazy pills??

Here’s a little secret – there’s is a reason why people DVR shows just to skip the commercials.

A few years ago (July ’08) I wrote a blog post in which I basically suggested one way to make commercials suck less is for them to introduce new music. It was a cutesy idea but didn’t really solve the major issues I’ve mentioned above.

So when I first saw what Old Spice did this week I was amazed. I’ve seen the future!

Quick backstory – Old Spice has been running a series of commercials called “The Man Your Man Could Smell Like” with a cocky, confident, chiseled dude who articulately talks about the weird stuff that he is doing. They are the exact type of clever commercials that suck less and can be tolerated even after you’ve already seen each ad over a dozen times. This week they took it to another level. Over a two day period, Old Spice created over 80 short YouTube video ads in which the Old Spice Guy responds directly to people through social media channels (Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, etc.). Old Spice Guy responds to both celebrities and regular folks all in high quality, well-written “commercial-like” responses. You can watch the YouTube videos here.

So in real-time Old Spice was creating awesome, fresh content. It leveraged cheaper production costs, social media distribution platforms, and two way communication with its viewers to do something cool. Instead of relying on technologies from the freaking 1960′s, Old Spice figured out how to leverage modern day tools, platform and technologies to create the kind of stuff that people love.

I was into it. On Wednesday, I tweeted to Old Spice that I would donate $100 to any charity they mentioned if they made a video reply to me. I was so excited that I crossed my toes as I typled.

I’m not saying every brand should start employing this exact gimmick. But I’d be willing to bet marketing and advertising will look a lot more like this in ten years than the standard 30 second commercial. It definitely will take some time. Processes need to be modernized. For instance, the way commercials are approved and trafficked are obsolete. Brands have to be willing to further let go of how tightly they control the marketing message. The intricate conspiracy of pretending that commercials don’t suck will need to be exposed like Jeff Francouer lack of plate discipline.

Hopefully this is a harbinger of more cool stuff to come in television advertising. Otherwise, when the advanced life forms in 2150 look back at the “Lebron Era” of history (in their Comm 101 classes) they’re just going to laugh at how stupid we all were!

Here is a video that Old Spice made in response to a comment by Perez Hilton…

I do realize that all you Littyhoopsters are not necessarily as fascinated by the blending of jocks, geeks and suits. So I’ve attempted to venture out to find the right audience for these posts.

I syndicated my post on March Madness on Demand to The Wire blog that is part of the Business Insider Network. This is one of the top digital blogs on the web and is a neat way to get my name and ideas out there. I’m planning to write more about sports and digital for them in the future. It was pretty simple to set this up as I reached out directly to the Deputy Editor, Dan Frommer, and after swapping a few emails we had a basic arrangement in place that allows me to contribute. My first post was read over 250 times and retweeted 48 times. My friends Pete, Blake, Ellstein and Matt M. all spotted it on their own and it made me feel big time!

This week I (or whoever is Brian Litvak – without a “c”) had my blog post on a Freemium ticket model idea posted on CNBC’s Sports Biz Blog with Darren Rovell. The blog announced a contest last week to publish guest blog posts. Over 100 submissions were sent in and Darren and team published 14. My post was lucky enough to be selected. This post dissected the idea of a professional sports team giving away tickets in order to increase game attendence and fan base which a team can then monetize in other ways. I’m not sure if this plan makes economic sense right now (and no team has yet to try it) but it’s an interesting thought exercise especially since I believe sports is shifting from an event dominated medium to a media dominated medium. I received a bunch of comments and it was cool to see how people reacted. One guy commented that this was a bad idea because “half of the stadium is filled with homeless people, most of whom aren’t wearing team logos, don’t spend any money on food or parking, don’t smell very nice, and who beg from the other half of the crowd?”. I think this guy might be confused between my idea and the fans of Philadelphia.

By the way, Darren Rovell is from Roslyn (town next to Great Neck) and is just a few years older than me. I give him lots of credit as he single handedly created a niche in sports business reporting (first for ESPN and now for CNBC). He’s been super responsive the few times I’ve reached out to him over the years and therefore I’m not just a fan of his reporting but as him as a person as well. Plus, the Sahn brothers say he is a good dude.

Look forward to sharing some more of my ideas, theories and findings on digital sports business. Even if you don’t read it here, perhaps you’ll see it on the cover of the Wall Street Journal one day. I hope that black and white sketch of my face is pimp

The future of MMOD was addressed in vague terms. The official release noted that MMOD will continue to be launched from NCAA.com and CBSSports.com but that Turner will operate and develop the media player and will have enhanced digital rights for Turner and Time Warner platforms. Turner’s David Levy promised that “there will be unrivaled access for viewers” but didn’t get into specifics around MMOD and live streaming.

The fact that Turner now controls “the player” is telling. My guess is that “enhanced digital rights” means that they will only show live game action if an online or wireless user can authenticate that they are a cable subscriber that receives Turner programming. This is very similar to the model that ESPN is using for ESPN3.com (formerly ESPN360). For everyone else, MMOD will include highlights, live look ins, press conferences, etc. The fact that the player will “launch” from NCAA.com and CBSSports.com seems like antiquated and inconsequential terminology. The significance probably has more to do with corporate sponsorship activation than any impact to the fan viewing experience.

The underlying issue is that the shift in programming from network television to cable broadcasters has a huge impact on the digital strategy. TNT, TBS and truTV will combine with CBS to televise every game live for the first time in the history of the NCAA tournament. Turner’s three cable networks realize tremendous value from these programming rights when negotiating new distribution deals with cable providers. A decent percentage of Turner subscribers are up for renewal in the next ten years (right as the Final Four begins to shift over to cable) and having the rights to the tournament gives Turner favorable leverage in demanding higher subscriber rates from cable providers.

Here’s why MMOD gets lost in the mix. Cable providers don’t want to pay premium prices to Turner only to see that same programming distributed freely online. Even with its torrid growth over the last few years, MMOD reportedly generated $37 million in advertising revenue 2010. That’s certainly impressive for digital ad revenue, but pales in comparison to the tens of millions of dollars per month that Turner can realize in additional subscription fees.

I’m still holding on to my argument in my last post that the MMOD franchise was valued at close to $0 in this new deal. True, there is no agreement without digital and wireless rights included. But when dealing in billions, the online revenue is small and gets boxed out as a threat to the prevailing business model rather than embraced. If digital was really that valuable, CBS would still be the sole rightsholder right now. The digital growth of MMOD couldn’t cover the escalating rights fees and that’s why the money-making cable guys needed to step in (who aren’t as in love with digital as the rest of us).

Perhaps this signals the death of mass audience live streaming programming on the web (a concept that MMOD helped prove). There seems to be enough linear channels to carry just about any large sporting event that would get significant audience. Television viewers can be monetized at a far better rate than online viewers. Not only are there cable subscriber fees but television ads are still monetized at a higher CPM as well. An ad on 50 inch flat screen is more valuable than one a ½ inch computer screen as you multitask.

It seemed obsolete that over the last few years CBS still broadcasted the first few days of the tournament on just one linear television station. Millions of fans were at the whim of Greg Gumble and a button pusher in the CBS control room to determine what game they got to watch. That’s what made MMOD so sweet. Not only could you watch the games at work – but now you got to be the button pusher! That loses some luster if all the games are being televised in their entirety. Yes, people are still going to want to watch at work or on the go and that’s probably is what is allowing MMOD to live on in some form.

The ability for digital to allow viewers to control their experience could likely be the future of live sports on the web. CBSSports.com did a great job of that at the Masters this year. Choose your own camera angle, focus on specific athletes or employ other production tricks to augment the television broadcast. The “on the go” mobile component to viewing live sports is strictly a matter of convenience. Both of those concepts will be the next incremental revenue source assuming the revenue pie can be split between the rightsholders, content providers and cable networks.

My guess is that digital, wireless and television will eventually fully converge and none of this stuff will really matter. If you think that March Madness is dramatic, sit back and watch the broadcasters, cable networks and cable providers fight it out over the next decade!

My Final word: All true college basketball fans, including myself, breathed a sigh of relief that the NCAA decided not to mess with perfection too much. It seems as though the tournament will only slightly expand to 68 teams instead of the much discussed and maligned idea if 96 teams.

The NCAA currently has three years left on an agreement with CBS, signed in 1999 for over $6 billion, which would pay them about $700 Million per year for the broadcast rights to the tournament. The NCAA can also opt out of the current deal and sign a new deal (kind of like Dirk this summer). The expanded format, which includes the 32 additional games, is attractive to both CBS and ESPN as it allow for two more full days of programming. Reported by SBJ, ESPN’s bid ($800M per year over 14 years) is a bit less than the combined bid by CBS and Turner ($840 per year). The NCAA has yet to make a decision.

Besides having a rooting interest in this as a college hoops fanatic, I’m also intrigued by how the digital component plays into the equation. March Madness On Demand, the online streaming of all NCAA tournament games, is lauded each year as the ideal online live video programming event. In 2010, over 6 million viewers tuned in to the first two days to combine for over 8.7 million hours of live streaming. More importantly, the event generated over $37M in online ad sales.

Let’s take a closer look at this $37M. It’s 20% better than the online ad revenue in 2009. It’s almost 9x better than the revenue MMOD generated in 2006 (the first year it was free and completely ad-supported). And if we turn back the clock all the way to 2005, when CSTV acquired the rights to MMOD and produced the event (with yours truly playing the role of the little boy who tried to put his finger in the well to avert complete calamity), the total revenue was less than $1MM with online advertising accounting for less than $300K. AdAge does a good job of breaking down the annual digital revenue.

Despite this exponential growth (in a time when television sales has stayed pretty stagnant), digital revenues still account for less than 10% of total revenues generated by CBS. What’ shocking is trying to predict how the networks valued digital revenue growth in making their bids. My guess is that the number is close $0.

Yup. I’m calling it like just like I had Butler going to the national championship game. One of the most successful online video franchises in the history of the web will cease to exist in 2011.

Whoever has the rights in 2011 will have a huge cable presence. CBS plans to partner with Turner and broadcast games on CBS, TNT, TBS and truTV. I’m not sure of ESPN’s plan but my guess is that their distribution would include ESPN2, ESPNU and ABC. Basically the Mega March Madness product exclusive to DirecTV will be shifted to regular cable. Chris Littman (another Litty??) of the Sportingnews.com does a nice job breaking down the media implications.

Cable companies don’t like to give away their most valuable content online for free. No matter how well they sell digital, it is still more difficult to monetize a user to the same extent as a television viewer. Combine that with the fact that cable companies make a substantial percentage of their total revenues (usually greater than their advertising revenue) from carriage fees paid by the major cable companies for their content. This shift to cable plus the additional programming is what accounts for the higher rights fees. Cable companies (Comcast, Time Warner, Cox, DirecTV, etc.) are super protective of their investment in content and won’t stand to see it given away for free online (unless they can fully control the experience). If you want proof, check out the digital access model employed by ESPN for ESPN3.com.

For the viewer/fan, this means they will probably be able to watch every game televised live in it’s entirety on good old television. No more cursing CBS as you miss miraculous game winner after unbelievable buzzer beater. What you will most likely forfeit is the opportunity to watch games online at work during the day. Of course, this all becomes a moot point as the convergence of digital and television unfolds (which seems inevitable but might not happen in 2011).

Does it seem like this would be a move backwards? Maybe or maybe not. Even without an online streaming product, I’d bet their will be some kind of digital or mobile distribution solution. Perhaps this is in the hands of the MSO’s (as Comcast is trying to do with Xfinity) instead of the content providers. Perhaps the NCAA carves out specific stipulations regarding digital in the deal. Or it could be a renegade technology (Slingbox-esque). Perhaps I’m totally wrong and MMOD will be back in it’s same exact form next season.

I am willing to bet that how the tournament is broadcasted and distributed five years from now will be more shocking and unimaginable than the how far it’s all come since I worked on this little project back in 2005. At the time, the prevailing thought was that MMOD didn’t sell well because it just wasn’t good content/product.

What I’m really saying is brace yourself to experience Steve Lavin and the Johnnies cutting down the nets in 4D (don’t forget the psychedelic dimension) brooo!!!!

I received a comment and an email from a developer in NYC named Kevin Marshall. Kevin has been in the fantasy sports space for quite awhile and had a bunch of very similar ideas on how fantasy sports should leverage the twitter platform to create new types of games. A few lunches later (and the recruitment of a talented designer who designed the site and created a sick logo) and we agreed to go for it and see if we could do any damage.

This week we launched our first actual fantasy game called Pennant Race Drive. It is a baseball prediction game in which a player can tweet up to five predictions per day on which teams will win and which players will hit a Home Run that night. Obviously predicting who will hit the long ball is far more difficult than which teams will win and therefore the payoff is 10x greater.

Win/Loss = 1 point
Home Run = 10 points

I’d love to see all you fantasy sports + twitter heads to give the game a shot. If you want to predict team wins include up to five teams (full nickname), the hashtag #win, and the #gawkit hashtag, or http://gawk.it within the tweet. If you want to predict Home Runs then use players full names plus the #HR. Be sure to include #gawkit or http://gawk.it so that the tweet is picked up by the gawk.it scoring enginge.

Here are a few examples
Derek Jeter, Alex Rodriguez and Jorge Posada will all go yard tonite #HR #gawkit

The Yankees, Mets, Dodgers, Red Sox will all #win http://gawk.it

Only one type of prediction will register for each tweet. Also, the last five predictions that you log each day will count. All predictions need to occur at least 10 minutes before the game starts.

You can check out all the rules and details for the game at http://gawk.it website. Be sure to join the Littyhoops group to compete against yours truly. The game will continue throughout the season and we’re giving away Amazon Gift cards to weekly winners ($25) as well as the overall winner ($100).

In addition, we’re also donating one penny per correct tweet to the DonorsChoose.org organization (a charity that I recently blogged about). The overall winner of Pennant Race Drive will determine which school projects we will donate too. I’m excited by this philanthropic angle. As the game grows in popularity so to will our contribution to a great cause.

We’re excited to have something up and running and see if it sticks. Twitter is an extremely viral platform so if you like the game please just send out a few tweets to your followers and help us spread the good word. You can easily just retweet this message.

The Gawk.It game engine is built upon the twitter platform (using twitter’s open API’s) and this allows us to easily create all different kinds of fantasy games for just about any sport or statistical category. We’re already thinking about what we should do for football season and beyond.

Hit me up if you want to chat some more about gawk.it or the Pennant Race Drive.

The more the steroid story has progressed (or digressed) the more I (and everyone else but the media!) have been turned off. Take away Brett Farve and Michael Vick and the most annoying and over-covered sports stories of this decade are all steroid-related (Canseco, BALCO, Congress hearings, Bonds, McGwire/Sosa aftermath, Clemens and Mcnamee, A-Roid, Manny, Big Papi/Boli). I might as well follow the daily toils of Spencer and Heidi if I want to intentionally make my brain ache.

The thing that really gets me is the hypocrisy. Steroids permeated throughout the game for so long. Yet almost every player acts super self-righteous about how clean they are and that they’ll take any kind of drug test anytime. When a player gets caught he says he only did it once, puts his head between his legs, and then he apologizes for the mistake. It worked for Giambi and Pettite. The media feigns outrage on how they got bamboozled once again. The front office pretends like they had no idea. For goodness sake, as I right this there is still no way to test for the most prevelent steroid HGH! How can you not assume a large majority of players are still on the performance enhancer? The scandal runs deep.

You know what though. I can almost look past all this crap. My love of the game would make me a baseball apologist. I don’t really care that players “cheated” and don’t need to hear about every detail of who and how and why.

But I’ve finally reached my tipping point. LittyDingers is tapped out trying to make sense of how steroids has effected the game of baseball.

There is all this banter and buzz about the list. 104 players tested positive for Steroids in 2003. The test was supposed to be anonymous and the results destroyed. But they weren’t. Now a player is leaked every few months and it brings this crappy steroid saga back to the forefront all over again. I’m sick of it. Sure, I’m curious to see whose on the list. But does it even matter? To me everyone in Baseball is to blame.

I’ve decided t project my own list and I’m just going to assume it’s exactly correct. It will be similar to the dog and pony show that Lunardi does on ESPN complete with the pompousness and geeky inside jokes. I was explaining this to my friend Tanny but he didn’t share in my confidence that I could correctly pick all 104. Instead he just asked a bunch of questions?. I admitted I’d probably only get at least 97 and challenged him to match his list against mine and put up $10 per player. The offer is still out there for whoever is interested. The only other prognosticator that I fear is Jose Canseco as he’s been right almost every single time!

L-Hoops Steroid Projected Field of 104

Here is the criteria for being selected by the committee of me.

• Guilty. I’m listing all players who have already been implicated. If they’ve ever been named in Steriod reports and they played in 2003 they are on the list.
• Stats. Any player that had an unnatural and meteoric rise in Home Runs is suspicious. This includes players that started peaking after their normal prime (28-31) years or who magically reversed their production numbers after they peak. It also takes into account players who suddenly started hitting for power and who had just as sudden declines after MLB officially banned steroids in 2005.
• Nationality. If a large percentage of the players that have been caught so far are from Latin America than it’s a trend worth noting. It seems like you could walk into a bodega in Santo Domingo and order boli con arroz. This doesn’t excuse the Aaron Boone’s of the world but let’s let bygones be bygones (if anybody can explain to me what a bygone is I’ll buy you your next anabolic cycle).
• Team. Steroids is a locker room thing. You live and play with a teammate and he starts killing it. Natural curiosity will get the best of a player and it’s not far fetched that a closed door club house meetings turns into a bunch of dudes stabbing needles up each other arses.

Disclaimer: No actual primary source research has gone into this post or the formation of the list. I have mixe feelings that I may be smearing clean ball players (although I’m pretty sure I’ll go 104 for 104 in Steriodology). I blame the game. Being unfairly implicated on any level is a product of choosing a slimy profession (which baseball was in 2003). If I meet a politician I assume he’s corrupt. If I meet a pharmaceutical sales rep I assume he is a total bullshitter who is great at leaving long-winded voicemails and verbally fluffing doctors. Hence, if you were a power hitter in 2003 you no longer get the benefit of the doubt. Sorry dudes. In fact, I’m including three of my favorite players (Andy Pettite, Shawn Green and Ed Duque). There really is no favoritism here. So don’t think I put 9 Red Sox Players on the list just because I hate them.

Confirmed Players on the 2003 List (#1 Seeds)
Thanks to over ambitious reporters like Mark Fainaru-Wada, Selena Roberts, unknown sources and the union really screwing up we seem to get a name from the shadows every now and then. Below are the four players that have been confirmed to be on the 2003 list

1. Barry Bonds
2. Alex Rodriguez
3. Manny Ramirez
4. David Ortiz

Players Named in Mitchell Report who played in 2003 (Locks)
This ESPN.com list does a thorough job explaining the context of why they were included in the report.

5. Marvin Bernard
6. Bobby Estalella
7. Jason Giambi
8. Jeremy Giambi
9. Benito Santiago
10. Gary Sheffield
11. Randy Velarde
12. David Segui
13. Larry Bigbie
14. Jack Cust
15. Brian Roberts
16. Josias Manzanillo
17. Todd Hundley
18. Matt Franco
19. Rondell White
20. Roger Clemens
21. Andy Pettite
22. Jason Grimsley
23. Greg Zaun
24. Mo Vaugn
25. Denny Neagle
26. Ron Villone
27. Ryan Franklin
28. Todd Pratt
29. Kevin Young
30. Kent Mercker
31. Adam Piatt
32. Miguel Tejada
33. Jason Christenson
34. Mike Stanton
35. Stephen Randolph
36. Jerry Hairston Jr.
37. Paul LoDuca
38. Adam Riggs
39. Fernando Vina
40. Kevin Brown
41. Eric Gagne
42. Matt Herges
43. Garry Bennett
44. Jim Parque
45. Brendan Donnelly
46. Chad Allen
47. Howie Clark
48. Derrick Turnbow
49. Rafael Palmeiro
50. Rick Ankiel
51. David Bell
52. Paul Byrd
53. Jay Gibbons
54. Troy Glaus
55. Jose Gullien
56. Darren Holmes
57. Scott Schoenweis
58. Ismael Valdez
59. Matt Williams
60. Steve Woodard

Players that Have Been Suspended by Baseball (Received Automatic Bids)
Official testing and suspensions started in 2005. The players on this list were in the league in 2003.

61. Juan Rincon
62. Alex Sanchez
63. Rafael Bettencourt
64. Matt Lawton
65. Felix Heredia
66. Carlos Almanzar
67. Guillermo Mota
68. Neifi Perez
69. JC Romero

Guys Who Just Hit Too Many Home Runs
(Projected to be on the list based on their body of work)

70. Richie Sexson (45 Home Runs in 2003)
Sexson might be a natural giant standing 6’8″ but his numbers are just too inconsistent to be trusted. He twice hit 45 Home Runs in a season (including 2003) but had a precipitous drop in production in 2007 when he batted .205 in almost 500 plate appearances. Yuck. He was cut twice in 2008 despite having a 15.5M salary.

71. Carlos Delgado (42)
Forget the fact that Delgado has an impressive 473 career Home Runs. All you need to look at is a 2008 season in which he looked washed up and was about two more dreadful weeks from losing his job and being released but ended up with 38 Home Runs and was an MVP candidate.

72. Andrew Jones (36)
Jones had all the talent in the world as a young prospect and vividly remember the 2 Home Runs he hit as a teenager in game 1 of the World Series against the Yankees in 1996. A few things don’t add up. Jones smacked a combined 92 Home Runs in 2005 and 2006. In 2007 at the peak age of 30 he batted .222 and then last year he hit .158. My guess is that he weighs 75 lbs more than he did when he first entered the league.

73. Preston Wilson (35)
Wilson had his best year in 2003 when he drove in 141 runs. By the time he was 32 he was out of the league.

74. Brett Boone (35)
Boone never hit more than 24 Home Runs in a season going into 2002. Then at the age of 33 he had a power surge where he averaged 33 Home Runs over the next three years. In 2005, he quickly shriveled down to 7 diners in 360 plate appearances and batted .221. Canseco implied that Boone was a user in his book — so put him on the list!

75. Jeremy Burnitz
At the age of 27, Burnitz had more years of life under his belt than career Home Runs. He then went on a five year tear where he averaged close to 33 HR’s per year. Burntiz was a classic swing for the fences power hitter who struck out more than Evanter in his single days. Burnitz is on the bubble but he was around in the Rodomski clubhouse so he makes the list.

76. Reggie Sanders (29)
Sanders was a speed guy who didn’t start to hit for 30+ HR power until he was 33 in 2001. He also stayed in the league till he was 39 and had a better stolen base percentage after he was 34.

77. Dmitri Young (29)
He is a fat guy who was a gap hitter. In 2003 he had 29 HR’s but never hit more than 21 in any other season. Young also won Comeback Player of The Year (a dead giveaway) and bashed Bonds a bit too publicly.

78. Carl Everett (29)
Classic case of roid rage. Shady story about family abuse. He also thinks that “Gays being gay” is wrong. Everett also wondered once, “if everybody in the world goes on steroids, we’ll still lose more kids to a war than we will to steroids”.

79. Nomar Garciaparra (28)
Nomar burst into the league (and his chest burst onto the cover of Sports Illustrated) and led the AL in hitting in ’99 and 2000. But his decline was as rapid as any player in history and 2003 (age 29) was really his last good season. Boston knew something was up when they traded him. Nomar is even angling because he knows he is on the list. He recently suggsted that many players asked to be put on the list.

80. Richard Hildago (28)
44 HR’s in 200 at the age of 25. Never hit more than 28 in any other season. Was a disaster on the Mets in 2004 and out of the league at the age of 30 in 2005.

81. Jay Payton (28)
Payton had his best season in 2003 when he hit 28 HR (it was in Colorado). He never hit more than 18 HR in any other season. His stats don’t stand out but it amazes me that he hung around in the big leagues for 11 years. The Randomski presence also plays a factor here.

82. Jose Valentin (26)
Utility player was 5’10″ and 175lbs. Doesn’t make sense that he averaged 27 HR a year from the age of 30-34 (2000-2004). Before that string he had only one season with more than 20 HR.

83. Luis Gonzalez (26)
If your looking for the template model of how Steroids are a performance enhancer look no further than this guy. At the age of 33 in 2001 he jacked 57 HR. That is more HR than Mickey Mantle, Lou Gehring, Hank Aaron or Willie Mays ever had in one season. Gonzalez had never hit more than 31 HR in a season before 2001. No juice and there is NO WAY his little jam shot gets out of the infield in Game 7 of the 2001 World Series. Gonzalez acts outraged that their is steroid talk around his name. But really, Luis, we all know it’s roid rage!

84. Tony Batista (26)
Tony Batista averaged over 30 HR per year from 2000-2004. After that, from the age 30 on, he hit 7 career HR.

85. Morgan Ensberg (25)
He went from 10 HR in a full season in 2004 to 36 HR and 101 RBI in 2005. Houston got rid of him in 2007 and his career was basically halted at the age of 31. He played on the Yanks for a bit in 2008 and was worthless.

86. Raul Mondesi (24)
I could have sworn that Mondesi was on the Mitchell Report list but I guess not. Mondesi was a beast on the Dodgers – perhaps too big of a beast. He never hit more than 33 HR in a season and his power numbers kind of look Kosher. Yet, if you saw him play day to day on the Yanks you knew that something was up.

87. Brian Giles
Between 1999-2003, Giles average 37 HR. In the last five seasons, he’s never hit more than 15 HR. Instead he was sued for beating his girlfriend.

88. Marcus Giles
Standing all of 5’8″, Giles crushed 21 HR in 2003. Let’s just say this him and his bro were also butt buddies.

89. Shawn Green
This kills me since the jewish superstar was one of my favorite players as a teenager. But let’s be honest, Green had no business averaging 40 HR per year over a five year span between 1998 and 2002. Green power dramitcally dropped off in 2003 and he was out of he league by the age of 34. There’s always the chance that he DIDN’T do steroids and that’s why his production fell off. Are sterioids even kosher?

90. Jason Varitek
Varitek had really little power until 2003 when he knocked 25 round trippers at the age of 31. He’s a good catcher and consummate professional but no way he should ever have 25 jacks in a season. Rumors swirled that he would be named in the Mitchell report but he wasn’t.

91. Kevin Millar
Another Red Sox with 25 Home Runs in 2003. I guess Millar has some pop in his bat but he also was awful for large stretches of his career. But there just always appeared to be something shady about that guy.

92. Travis Hafner
Hafner is huge lugging around a 240 lb frame. He was just starting his career in 2003 but went on to hit 113 HR in the next three season. He hasn’t done much in the last two seasons and it appers like hi career has been derailed by injuries at the age of 30.

93. Edgardo Alfonso
Alfonso had a few great seasons with the Mets but never hit more than 17 HR after he was 27. He was already on the down slope of his career in 2003 and was basically done by 31. It seems like he was either never meant to put up 2 seasons of 25+ HR or he fell off way too quickly. Another guy who was Radomskied!

94. Phil Nevin (13)
Nevin was the overall #1 pick in 1992 but it really took him till the age of 27 in 1999 to break into the big leagues. He had a few monster years in 2000-01. But then injuries set in for the next few seasons. Nevin had another decent year in 2004 but was out of league after 2006. In the 2004 off-season he lost 30 lbs of muscle. I remember him pointing at the fences in disbelief after he hit a ball to the warning track in San Diego. He was basically saying “I can’t even hit it out and I’m cheating!”

95. Ryan Klesko (9)
Klesko was a typical power hitter on the Braves but then just seemed to lose it on the Padres in 2004 when he hit 9 HR at the age of 33. He had 1 HR at the break that season and it was just too fishy for something not to be up.

96. Shane Spencer (12)
Anybody who remembers Spencer’s remarkable performance during his September call up with the Yanks in 1998 knows this is a no brainer. The unheralded prospect hit 10 HR in his first 67 AB’s. He would hang around the league for 5-6 seasons although never hitting more than 12 HR. But let’s face it, he was not a major league talent.

97. Ruben Sierra (9)
Sierra was a all-star player in his prime in the mid 90′s but was basically toast by the age of 31 in 1997. He somehow surfaced again in the big leagues in 2001 at the age of 35 and would go on to play 5 more seasons including hitting 17 HR for the Yankees in 2004 at the age of 38. He either found of the fountain of youth in Mexico or…

98. Ellis Burks
Ellis Burks averaged 28 HR between the age of 34-37. It was the most powerful four year span of his career. In his so called prime with the Red Sox in the early 90′s, Burks never hit more than 21 HR’s.

99. Julio Franco
The oldest guy to hit a HR in the majors (48) had a perfectly sculpted body and looked more like a 25 year old guy when he was 45 than when he was 25.

100. Gabe Kapler
I love Kapler because we hail from the same tribe. But after hitting 49 HR in a three year span early in his career he never hit more than 6 HR in a season. Kapler is a muscle head who was often featured in body building magazines. Got to figure he was taking some kind of banned substance.

Pitchers
101. Oscar Villareal
In 2003, at the age of 21 he led the league by pitching in 86 games. It’s by far the best season he’ll ever have in the big leagues.

102. Kyle Farnswoth
Perhaps the worst human being to ever play the the game of baseball there is no doubt in my mind that Farnsworth was part of this mess. He threw 105 miles per hour but was still somehow ineffective.

103. Julian Tavarez
Tavarez went from awesome to crappy throughout his career. He had horrible facial acne and always seems to be raging on the mound.

104. Livan Hernandez/Orlando Hernandez
The half brothers shared more than just a father. Always a cloud of unexplainable mysteriousness surrounded their careers. Livan ate too much. El Duque disappeared for a few years before surfacing again. Bizarre injuries. Lot of scowls on the mound from Duque.

Too Close To Call
(Teetering on the Anabolic Bubble)

Jim Thome
Javy Lopez
Albert Pujols
Jim Edmonds
Alfonso Soriano
Aubrey Huff
Vernon Wells
Carlos Lee
Jorge Posada
Magglio Ordonez
Vincente Padilla
Brett Myers
Craig Biggio
Rocco Baldelli
Johnny Damon
Trot Nixon
Casey Blake
Jose Lima
Eric Byrnes
Adrian Beltre
Geoff Jenkins

So there you have it. My greater point of this list is that it is representative of what the real list would look like. True, perhaps there is some oversized Dominican shortstop who genuinely started hitting for power at 36. Perhaps he really just decided to eat more spinach (comer mucho espinacas). I do apologize if I’m tarnishing his name. But I just don’t feel bad about it. If players were so worried about the game and the reputation of their good names they should have spoken up long ago. I’ve had enough agonizing over how steroids was ruining baseball. From now on, I’ll have fun with it and I hope you do the same,

But I certainly have been learning firsthand about the Twitter platform and how people are interacting and communicating in interesting new ways. Tweeting has proven invaluable for thinking up new ideas for the Sportsvite community. For example, I want to create an up to the minute twitter ringer alert to connect teams needing last minute subs with people looking to play sports that day. I also have begun including twitter applications and integrations into many of the Sportsvite sponsorship proposals. I’ve even been tweeting with NBA player Charlie Villanueva about potential business opportunities. In fact @CV31 told me that “we’re all big shots if we take big shots…”

I have one twitter idea that I’ve been thinking an awful lot about these days. I’ll call it Fantweetsy (or Fantwitsy) Sports. As you can probably figure out Fantweetsy Sports is a Fantasy sports game based on the twitter platform. (And yes, I’ve already purchased the domain names).

Before I get into the details I want to first break down a new trend in how people are watching television. No longer do people just sit on the couch and passively watch tv. They now actively watch television by using a second device. This device isn’t your cable box (cable companies are dropping the ball here!) but rather it is your laptop or mobile device. Think about how you follow your fantasy team online as you watch sports or tweeting/texting/BBM habits during your favorite television show. Perhaps you’re doing a completely different task online that isn’t related to what you are watching on television. Um, facebook? If you aren’t doing any of this stuff or don’t think this is a trend I dare you to find me a person born after 1985 who just stares at the Idiot Box mesmerized – it just doesn’t happen anymore.

Television is still the dominant medium for mass media. Look at the ratings for the NBA Finals, Monday Night Football or just about any major sporting event. The audience numbers are in the millions. Even more intriguing is that sports are DVR proof. People want to watch sports live. So every night of the week hundreds of thousands of sports fans are watching their favorite team on television while they twitter/twiddle their thumbs looking for something to do on their second (computer) or third (mobile) screen. This is where I believe a Twitter Fantasy game will do exceptionally well.

The power and success of Fantasy Sports is well documented (check out my thoughts). There are already all kinds of fantasy games from full-featured draft leagues to addicting, quick play games like ESPN Streak For The Cash or MLB Beat The Streak. But there is no current fantasy game that allows fans to play and interact in real time while the game is unfolding.

I haven’t yet figured out the exact rules for a Fantasy Twitter sports game. Let’s take an NBA finals game as a possible example though. Anytime before the game a user could send a tweet with five players’ names or numbers in the order of who they think would score the most points (or fill up the entire stat sheet if the game uses multiple categories). At any point during the game a user has a certain number of substitutions for reserves (in that same game) so you can sub in and out players just as the coaches are doing. To make a sub you just send a tweet with the switch. Certain characters and hash tags would signify tweets that apply to the game. Throughout the game stats will be accumulated and fantasy scores will be determined for the game.

A similar model could work for any sport. Even if these rules are a little shaky, I’m sure with some more thought we could come up with something really good. Perhaps a even more simplified version of a twitter fantasy game is just tweeting three players who you think will hit a Home Run that night and track progress throughout the season.

While this may sound interesting as a way to follow along for the NBA Finals think about a mid-season Big Monday college basketball game on ESPN. All of a sudden you can flip to ESPN and be instantly engaged in any sports event on television. You might actually have a reason to give a damn about the random BYU vs. TCU Mountain West conference game.

Since Twitter is an open platform building something like this is quite possible. Check out Twackle or StockTwits as examples of online communities built on top of the Twitter platform. The details definitely need to be flushed out from both a user and development standpoint.

Let’s see how this fits into my digital framework for my web ideas…

Digital crack- Check. Fantasy amazes me in that it is as addicting as gambling even though it’s not really gambling (people often play for the game instead of the money). Add to that the instant gratification, ease of play, and real time reporting and it’s certainly time to heat up the spoon!

Core Strengths – My personal skills and value would be in creating the rules of the game, developing the product and mucho marketing and PR. Development and design would be relatively limited (famous last words).

Social Media - It’s twitter. Little birdies sitting on branches chirping away. This is how Bird Flu spread and the game would be naturally viral.

SEO – Hm, not sure about this one. Perhaps twitter search is the new S in SEO.
Cult Community – Twitter just might be the biggest cult since Jim Jones’ Kool Aid party. The way people enjoy Fantasy and the explosion of twitter marries two incredible hot trends.

A&O – I guess in a way this application will be aggregating/organizing all the televised sports events and bringing them together. Granted, this is a bit of a stretch in that this business isn’t really creating efficiencies in information. I need to think about this some more.

Moral Mission/Passion – Not saving the world here but definitely would be doing something that is both cool and fun.

Revenue – Not sure yet. I’m very intrigued by a subscription fee possibility (while staying away from gambling). It could get dicey to rely on sponsorship opportunity (and hence immediate audience growth) and we’re past the days of just building something with no direct monetization strategy.

Major Concerns

#1 – Twitter 4 Life?
Building a business on top of a private platform (which is really just another business) can always be a bit risky. Who knows how twitter evolves and grows. But I also had the same concerns about Facebook and remember being baffled by a Facebook App conference right when they announced their API.

#2 – Unknown Revenue Streams
I’m just not sure if I have the appetite to build a business where success is not measured by revenue (at least off the bat). It would suck to get everything right and have great user adoption and the reward is that the business is out of cash and has no substantial revenue.

I like this business/project and can envision how I can get this going with a prototype out within a months for less than six figures. Fred Wilson recently wrote an intersting blog post about what drives consumer adoption and his theory was that consumers are driven by new experiences that are simple and useful and/or enteratining. I’m just not sure what would happen if this actually worked (but then again, I guess that would be a nice problem to have). I know somebody is going to do this and I think there is a big first move advantage for building buzz and an audience.

My plan is to send this blog post around to friends, colleagues and contacts and get some feedback. So if you’re reading this I would love to hear what you think and to discuss any interesting or pertinent opportunities or contacts.