The way I see it, football SOIs are the best ones to be buying right now, and current NFL players are the IPOs we should be requesting. I’ve repeatedly suggested the 2009 NFL preseason as a time of major growth for OneSeason, and here’s why:
1) Football is far and away the most popular fantasy sport. It’s not even close. Yes, even that nerdy Dan in accounting joined his office fantasy league, bought some fantasy mags, and is throwing a SuperBowl party at his place.
2) NFL is definitely the pro sport the average Joe knows the most about, and it’s the biggest betting sport by a good margin. Sally from human resources would never miss paying to enter her office’s weekly pick ‘em pool.
3) As a fall/winter sport, football has minimal competition from activities like the beach, the city park, camping, BBQ, vacations, etc. In most parts of the US, come late autumn, it’s either watching NFL or going ice fishing… not a tough choice for most guys.
4) With the increased popularity of NFL, that makes the buzz factor explode… watching preseason games at the bar, fantasy message boards, league draft parties, tailgaiting at the stadium, at your buddy’s house with HDTV and the Sunday Ticket package. At those events last year, OneSeason was not even running. Once it opened in October, it was still so new that there were very few SOIs to trade, and many people still had no idea how it worked or if it would actually pay out.
5) When did OneSeason’s market cap and trading volumes boom in 2008? That’s right: in football season. Yes, OneSeason was also brand new at that time, but if you look at other sports related websites (sports news, fantasy, message boards, wagering, etc etc), you will see an annual uptick in traffic during football season – particularly the early part of it. My guess is that the OS team had actually wanted to launch the site around August last year but encountered some technical delays.
6) With the trading volume and site traffic that NFL season (not only this season, but every season) is likely to bring to OneSeason, that will only help to push along the IPO releases. High volume = fun. IPOs = fun. Both together = very fun site and money to be made by smart traders. If this site makes it long term, I would predict that we will see a recurring pattern of the best average traffic, new users, trade volume, and market/IPO growth during NFL season annually.
7) NFL players have a game once per week at most, so there’s plenty of market days between games for stats and outcomes to affect SOI trading price.
8 ) Injuries are a very real possibility in football, and severe injuries are fairly common. If a player misses 5 games out of a 82 or 164 game year, no big deal. A 16 game season? That hurts, and it’ll probably affect his SOI’s price.
9) Sleepers and busts: it’s the talk of fantasy football drafters everywhere: will McFadden pan out? Is TO done being a fantasy stud? Will Matt Stafford start from week 1? With injuries and limited number of chances, a player’s performance and popularity can increase or decrease very fast. Stars appear and fade constantly in today’s NFL – esp at RB position. That should make for interesting changes in supply/demand and flux in SOI prices.
10) Brady bomb pass to a streaking Randy Moss leaping over three defenders. Adrian Peterson takes Favre’s handoff 65yds to paydirt. You know you can’t wait.
…Comments welcome, and football IPO requests are even more welcome. Trade on!
Any thoughts on Canada?
