Bye bye UIGEA.

Via Emile Servan-Schreiber of NewsFutures and Andrew Goldberg

The problem with FanDuel‘s simple business model (selling social gaming services over the Internet) is that, unlike HubDub (which is free to play), there won’t be free publicity generated on the Web —other than the TechCrunch UK post. Just because you have a business model does not mean that you have a marketing strategy.

The best marketing strategy you can have on the Internet is a dual one:

1. Give away content, software, or means for people to connect with each other;
2. Sell something else (to the same people or to other people).

Since FanDuel won’t be free, it won’t generate any buzz on the Web. [UPDATE: See Nigel Eccles's comment, just below.]

Nigel Eccles is proud of the fact that his team crafted FanDuel in a matter of weeks. But have they thought long enough about marketing strategy?

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Addendum:

The FanDuel press release:

SHAKING UP THE FANTASY SPORTS INDUSTRY

New Fantasy Sports Game Lets You Play Today, Win Today

There are at least 20 million of us playing fantasy sports every year and yet in recent years it has seen very little innovation. For many, one of the major problems with fantasy sports is the huge time-commitment involved – when you play fantasy, you have to play for the whole season – no breaks, no holidays, no excuses. However, in this era of Facebook and Twitter, people want instant gratification.

This issue is tackled head on by FanDuel.com, a new fantasy sports game which launches today. FanDuel.com lets us play and win in a day instead of waiting the whole season. Players can draft a new team at any time, and pitch it head-to-head against an opponent – a friend, or another FanDuel player – for real money. The player whose team has the most fantasy points at the end of the day’s games wins the cash prize. It’s purely fantasy baseball right now, but the fantasy football game will launch with the start of the football season.

Clever integration with sites like Facebook means that picking opponents is slick, as is bragging about your wins. This is a first for the fantasy sports industry which has been dominated by the big players such as Yahoo, CBS and ESPN for too long.

The game is a competitive draft rather than salary cap – making it much more challenging. However unlike traditional competitive draft both players don’t have to draft at the same time. The way it works is one player drafts their first pick and a back-up for each position. They then order their draft and submit their roster. When they are matched with another user (a friend or another FanDuel user) the system works through each player’s draft in priority order. You get an email telling you and your opponent’s final roster and then you can watch the live stats on both fantasy teams update in real-time as the games progress.

Online social gaming is already well developed but the daily fantasy sports market is quite new. Nigel Eccles, CEO of the company behind FanDuel, admits, “After playing Mafia Wars and other social games on Facebook, going back to playing traditional fantasy sports on CBS felt like going back in time. We felt we could build something faster, more social and exciting.”

Thanks to the fantasy sports carve out of the 2006 Unlawful Internet Gaming Act [Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act of 2006], FanDuel.com is perfectly legal to play in the US – something that the team behind FanDuel have been very careful to adhere to. FanDuel offers free and paid entry games with users able to enter $5, $10 and $25 competitions.

http://www.fanduel.com/

The FT.

PS: Contra Jason Ruspini, I have always said that the CFTC route is the wrong route. The U.S. should establish a kind of “Gambling and Betting Commission”, like in the U.K., in my view (and Caveat Bettor‘s view).

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Tip via Jason Ruspini

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Previously: on TradeSports death – on InTrade’s viability

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A very sad day (which I am not glad to report that I predicted would happen). TradeSports is probably the latest victim of both the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act of 2006 and the Louisiana prosecutors. It is also the victim of a lack of support from the prediction market luminaries. As for the pertinence of the InTrade-TradeSports splitting that was started in 2007, I leave this issue to the business historians.

InTrade (which does not float event derivatives on sports) is caught in the same regulatory net, but CEO John Delaney hopes that the CFTC could soon legalize event derivative exchanges —except those on sports. That is far from certain, though. And InTrade’s heyday is now over. See you in 2012, for the next presidential election.

The Sporting Exchange (which operates BetFair) is making a very different bet: the United States of America will one day legalize the betting exchanges and the trading on sports. That is a reasonable, long-term bet. But not all the Democratic legislators favor Internet gambling and betting —far from it. We will see.

The future is spelled “BetFair”, but many of my readers don’t like the way they display odds —Americans prefer probabilities.

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RELATED: A news article (in French) implies, between the lines, that BetFair (who always respected the US laws) should be later granted a license to operate in the US, the day it becomes legal, while InTrade-TradeSports (who didn’t) should not be granted a license. Hummm…

EXTERNAL LINK: iMEGA

THANKS: Tip via mister Emile of NewsFutures