Fantasy Baseball will survive. . .

My gut feeling for Fantasy Baseball this spring is. . . There will be Fantasy Baseball on Yahoo!, but not the FB that we have enjoyed over the years. At least not the free one, sure Yahoo will offer a free game, but it will probably not have all the features we love.

If you played YFB in the 90's, you will remember it was all free, then in 2001 Yahoo! added Stat Tracker for only $4.95 for the rest of the season. And do you remember the good old days when you could click on any game an listen to the live broadcast for Free? That came to an end April 2001 when MLB signed a $20 million deal to let RealNetworks sell subscriptions to online baseball game broadcasts, they then told Radio Stations not to broadcasts on the net also.

MLB Advanced Media has offered license agreements to several small leagues at $10,000 for under 5,000 customers and $500,000 for leagues over 5,000. Last year YFB had a few Hundred Thousand players, sure some had two or three teams. But it's still alot, and I'm sure YFB and MLB will come to terms. ESPN, CBS sportsline and ROTO are also big players and if They could band together, could strike a deal that would make everyone happy.

MLB just doesn't understand how FB has grown it's fan base, or how it keeps growing through scandals, strikes and ticket prices. FB is the best thing that has happen to the majors and it has brought them new fans and alot of revenue. But that is not enough I guess. . .

Animaltrout! 2.10.05