Fantasy Sports New Kid Sideleague.com has an App for You
CHICAGO -- Are you a fantasy sports player?
There's an app for that.
As more and more people play in fantasy sports leagues that they access via their mobile devices rather than their computers, the leagues are making it easier for them to do so.
One hot new league, called SideLeague (www.sideleague.com) and based in the Windy City, has created such an app and even has free money for Gambling 911 readers who try it out!
In a visit to SideLeague's headquarters last week, Gambling 911 talked to the company's co-owner and vice-president of operations, Tony Giordano, and asked him about the app and also about what the company plans to do to stick out in an increasingly crowded sports fantasy league market.
Here is a transcript of that interview:
Gambling 911: How does your fantasy operation work and how is it different from the many other fantasy leagues out there? What states and countries are you legal in and how do you stop players who are not in those locations from joining? And what is the age limit to join and how do you verify that?
Tony Giordano: When we set out to make SideLeague, we came from a very different way of thinking. We wanted to make a fantasy app that provided all the things people love about traditional fantasy leagues--drafting, playing with friends, winning money--as well as all the things we liked about daily sites like FanDuel & DraftKings--no league set-up, join anytime, quick payouts and not having to worry about injuries. SideLeague fantasy sports is really very different from other offerings, both traditional and daily, because we wanted to create a product for people like us, avid sports fans that play fantasy to make the games more exciting. Where other daily fantasy sites appeal to hardcore professional fantasy sports players, we have set out from the beginning to make a more casual experience. Features like a no salary cap draft, live news and highlight feeds, integrated chat and automatically pairing you with friends when you join contests, all help foster this experience. SideLeague is available in the U.S. and Canada with the exception of: Alaska, Arkansas, Arizona, Hawaii, Iowa, Louisiana, Montana, North Dakota, Tennessee, Vermont, Washington, South Carolina and the province of Quebec, Canada. We are revisiting the outlawed states in the coming months and hope to reduce them as well. We stop people in those states from joining by requesting their GPS location via their cell phone. If a user does not grant us access, we do not allow them to join a contest. You must me 18 years old to join a contest. We do not currently verify age.
G9: How much does it cost to join and what do you get for your money?
TG: Contests run for a couple days for the NBA, NHL and MLB and up to a week for the NFL. We have several skill levels you can choose from and the payout will depend on which you choose. Regardless of which skill level you choose, all contests allow a maximum of 25 participants. Entry fees range from free to $20 and total prize payouts range from $1.50 to $400.
G9: Why is your operation legal and why isn't it considered gambling? Is there really any difference between guessing which team will have a good day and win a game, which is gambling, and guessing which players will have good days, which is legal fantasy play?
TG: I believe there is a pretty big difference. The Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act carved out fantasy sports as a game of skill. That distinction, the fact that fantasy sports are more skill than luck, is what makes the difference. I will also say that as a fan of sports, I find fantasy sports much less threatening to the integrity of the game. Gambling on specific games has come under fire in the past due to player-coach-owner involvement. The nature of fantasy sports, selecting players from multiple teams and games, makes foul play irrelevant.
G9: How did you get into the fantasy sports business? Can you tell us about your personal background?
TG: I grew up in the suburbs of Chicago and went to college at the University of Illinois at Chicago, where I studied accounting. After college I went to work for a young company run by a few very ambitious and intelligent people. After working there for a few years, the chief operating officer, the director of research and development and I were discussing a few business ideas and we kind of stumbled on to the daily fantasy scene. Being a huge fantasy sports fan, I knew it was a great opportunity. We ended up securing funding and getting to work on the project within a year.
G9: How are you preparing to compete against the commercially successful DraftKings and FanDuel? Both companies have attracted significant investment monies recently, so are you preparing to do the same?
TG: You’re probably not going to believe me, but we don’t really consider them direct competition.They’ve demonstrated, on many occasions, that they are catering to professional fantasy sports players who spend 30 to 40 hours a week researching lineups. The ecosystem that they’ve created is really pretty brutal for the more casual player. Thousands of people a day are heading over to both of those sites, only to donate their entry fees to the people who are making a living from it--the sharks. We’ve created a platform for casual players to compete against friends by limiting the number of contests a player can join, limiting the entry fees to $20 and limiting the number of contest participants to 25.
G9: What has been the growth rate of your business in the last year? What is the driving force behind that growth? Has the media coverage fantasy is getting this season translated into a boost for your own business? And how many paying customers do you have right now?
TG: It’s been pretty good. We’ve gone from essentially no users to about 1,000 active users in four months, about 25 per cent of which are paying. We feel like we could have gained even more traction during the NFL season if our app for the iPhone was accepted by the beginning of the season like we had hoped. Unfortunately, we had a few issues with Apple that needed to be sorted out and we ended up not getting into the store until October. Since October we’ve been mostly focused on social media and online marketing and it’s been working out fairly well. We’re currently planning a more traditional marketing plan for the coming year. It should be pretty fun.
G9: What is an average fantasy player worth? How much will he or she spend on daily fantasy games in a given year? How does this compare with season-long contests?
TG: I think the Fantasy Sports Trade Association publishes those figures and I want to say they found that the average fantasy sports player will spend about $100 a year, but don’t quote me on that. Ha-ha. It’s still really difficult to tell how much our users will spend because we have so little data. That being said, the early indications are encouraging. Our retention rate has been much higher than expected.
G9: Can you compete with the likes of ESPN and Yahoo should they enter daily fantasy sports, as is rumored?
TG: I definitely think we can compete with ESPN and Yahoo. We are, and have been, solely focused on creating a great user experience from a mobile standpoint. Features that we’ve built in from the start for SideLeague are either not built into their products or have only been partially implemented. They have a very difficult task ahead of them in regards to their mobile applications. They’re coming from an outdated desktop platform that doesn’t necessarily translate to mobile easily.
G9: Would it make sense for a fantasy company like yours to team up with an online sportsbook partner, such as Bookmaker.eu or Sportsbook.ag out of Costa Rica or one of the European books such as Paddy Power of Ireland or William Hill of the U.K.? Such a partnership would give you a ready-made customer base of sports-betting fanatics, so have any such companies approached you or vice-versa?
TG: I don’t think so. A partnership with a sportsbook doesn’t necessarily align with our goals as a company. We haven’t been in contact with any at this point.
G9: Where are you based and why have you chosen that location? And are you considering branching out into other locations?
TG: We’re based out of Chicago. There really wasn’t any thought regarding our location, we all just grew up and were working here already.
G9: What do you see as the fantasy highlights of 2014, both the highs and the lows? For example, what players have crushed your customer base and who are the big money-makers so far?
TG: I’m going to be honest, that is a great question that I can’t answer. We’ve been so busy just building the platform we haven’t gotten a chance to look into interesting stuff like that. I’ll have to give you an update in a few months.
G9: What is the most money anyone has earned playing with you?
TG: There’s one user that has been playing with us from the day we launched and he’s won over $11,000.
G9: Do you have many female players? What percentage of your customer base is female? Are there any significant differences in the way female customers play fantasy as compared to male players, as far as strategy, tactics and expectations are concerned?
TG: I know we have female players but I’m not sure how many or their tendencies. We don’t record the gender of our users so there’s really no way to know.
G9: What is the basic demographic of your paying customer? If it mirrors the demo of the average American sports bettor, it would be white and male with a high level of education and income, although the age for fantasy players would be lower on average than the age for sports bettors. How accurate is that assessment?
TG: Again, we don’t record or request this kind of information from our users, so I can’t really tell you. I wouldn’t be surprised if it was in line with what you described.
G9: Where do you expect fantasy in general and your company in particular to be a year from now? Do you expect legal sports wagering to become more widespread in the U.S. in the coming years? If you do, how would that affect fantasy?
TG: Because of what I mentioned earlier in regards to the integrity of the game, I don’t believe sport wagering will be legalized. I do expect fantasy sports, as well as SideLeague, to continue to grow greatly as the more casual fans get involved with short-term daily fantasy sports--daily and weekly. To this point I believe the majority of those people playing daily fantasy sports on a consistent basis are those who play professionally. We are going to change that.
G9: Do you have any promo codes available for our readers to give the app a try?
TG: For sure. Go to our website and after downloading the app go to the left side menu and enter code SL911 for a free $5 deposit!
By Tom Somach
Gambling911.com Staff Writer
