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Team Owners Among CEO’s Playing Bloomberg March Madness For Charity

Team Owners Among CEO’s Playing Bloomberg March Madness For Charity
36 leaders from top corporations and financial organizations submitted entries for Bloomberg’s Bracket Challenge, pledging $10,000 to the winner’s charity of choice. The champion’s designated non-profit will receive $360,000 in the winner-take-all competition.
Bloomberg CEO Mike Bloomberg, Under Armour CEO Kevin Plank (playing for the V Foundation), AOL CEO Tim Armstrong, Strauss Zelnick, chairman and chief executive officer of Grand Theft Auto video-game maker Take-Two Interactive Software Inc, Cisco Systems Inc. Chairman and Chief Executive Officer John Chambers, Brewers owner Mark Attanasio, Lakers CEO Jeanie Buss, Cavs Owner Dan Gilbert, Bucks owner Mark Lasry,  Celtics co-owner Steve Pagliuca, Fortress CEO Mike Novogratz (Playing for Beat the Streets Wrestling),  and Goldman Sachs CEO Gary Cohn (Playing for Harlem RBI) are amongst those in the game, which is updated in real time.
The full graphic can be found here: http://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2015-march-madness/

Real Madrid Looks To Turn Pay Fantasy Into A Winner For Fans

Real Madrid Looks To Turn Pay Fantasy Into A Winner For Fans
By: Joe Favorito @JoeFav

The pay fantasy space keeps growing in interest in the United States as well as now, globally. In recent months a host of European soccer clubs like FC Barcelona, Chelsea FC and AS Roma have launched pay fantasy games in hopes of drawing in new dollars and engaging a worldwide audience, especially one in the US that is now soccer savvy and used to playing pay fantasy in American football and baseball especially. The developer on many of these is Mondogoal, with offices both in the States and in Isle of Mann.

However this past week another high powered soccer club launched their own game, this one with a Million Dollar payoff. It was Real Madrid, and in partnership with US-based Hotbox sports, they created a game where a $5 wager can turn into a big winner. After months of quiet speculation and some difficult logistical hurdles which had to be cleared, the contest was unveiled before this coming weekend.

Unlike the traditional salary cap games that fantasy consumers are used to, the Real Madrid game is pretty simple; supporters pick nine players from any position for the match. There is no cap limit on stars. There are a series of analytics that will rally points for your nine players ranging from shots to saves to passes to time on field, all based on the playing roster the club has that day. Your best points totals overall will help net a winner, no pun intended. A series of tiebreakers will also help create the best possible winning scenarios.

“The concept of the game is simple, and the potential payoff is huge,” said Terry Lyons of Hotbox Sports, who has created a similar pick em game with the NHL New Jersey Devils, the first ever for a US sports league. ‘While many pay fantasy games are complicated and sometimes difficult to understand, we have taken a concept with a global brand and made it very understandable for everyone who follows the team. You control the roster and you root for your team. The better your guys do, the better the chances are of cashing in. We think it will be a big hit with the global audience Real Madrid has.”

Real Madrid hosts Levante in a La Liga match on the 15th before their showdown with FC Barcelona on the 22nd.

With March Madness Here, FanAngel Rolls the Dice On Funding Athletes

With March Madness Here, FanAngel Rolls the Dice On Funding Athletes
By Joe Favorito @JoeFav
 Pay for play has been a popular theme in the debate over college athletics, but pay for stay?


Another of those seem like a good idea platforms has arisen in the past few weeks to somehow try and solve the issue of keeping elite athletes in school. It is a crowdfunding site called FanAngel which will allow fans to anonymously contribute to pay college athletes to stay in school through donations that are given to the athlete when his or her eligibility expires.


According to an ESPN.com story, founder Sean Fojtik said that when a fan commits a pledge to an athlete, that money is immediately taken out of the account. Eighty percent of the money will be held for that athlete if that athlete does choose to stay in school, 10 percent will be given to that athlete’s teammates, and 10 percent will be earmarked for charity and scholarship funds. The money is given to the athlete when that athlete’s eligibility expires. FanAngel’s revenue source would be to take a fee, as much as nine percent, from the donation to help facilitate the fund.


While the site says it will steer clear of NCAA rules with regard to mentioning names, many have argued that the site would create an unfair advantage for big schools and marquee names, easily creating an unfair advantage. And although the site is anonymous with regard to where the funds could go, corruption could easily ensue. The story also says that there is no way for athletes to contact the  company or crowdfund on their own through his site, although we are talking enterprising young people and deep pocketed donors, which can be a lethal mix in many cases.


Is the idea a low risk, high reward play for the creators, a legitimate solution to help solve the one and done rule, or a symbol of much that is wrong with college athletes, where big schools find big donors with big ways to circumvent the rules? For one thing it is creative, but as we have seen in the free market, the only way for it to work is to pull big dollars from anonymous sources, while the NCAA watches very closely.


Fan Angel gets high marks for buzz and creativity. Whether it translates into a legit business solution is anyone’s guess and some people’s gamble.

DraftKings strengthens NBA portfolio

US-based fantasy sports operator DraftKings has further expanded its presence in the North American NBA basketball market after it entered into a partnership with the Minnesota Timberwolves.

Under the deal, the terms of which were not disclosed, DraftKings will become a presenting sponsor of the franchise’s TimberWolves Team Stats social media feature and the WolvesCast official team podcasts.

DraftKings will also benefit from a branding presence on digital courtside and basket stanchion signage during the team’s games at its Target Center home.

In addition, the operator will have a presence on the franchise’s official website and will activate a range of social media promotions in partnership with the team.

DraftKings will also introduce new ‘Live Like a King’ fan sweepstakes that will give supporters the chance to win VIP tickets to home matches as well as transport to and from the game, a custom team jersey, pre-match dinner, a pre-game bench sit and a centre court photo opportunity.

“Fantasy sports gaming is a huge and rapidly growing industry and is something that many of our fans are interested and engaged in,” Timberwolves senior vice-president and chief revenue officer Ryan Tanke said.

“This partnership and industry category opens up some great new opportunities to further connect and engage with our fans.”

Paul Liberman, co-founder of DraftKings, added: “We want daily fantasy sports to engage and electrify fans, and we’re looking forward to making that happen for Timberwolves fans by providing them with unique experiences and new ways to interact with the sport.”

The agreement marks DraftKings’ fourth partnership in the NBA, having already entered into similar deals with the Houston Rockets, Philadelphia 76ers and Boston Celtics.

The operator has also established relationships with North American NHL ice hockey league as well as NFL American football teams the Denver Broncos and the New England Patriots.

 

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NBA Commissioner to Chris Christie: Join Me to Expand Sports Betting

With both powerful men calling for expanded legalized sports gambling, NBA Commissioner Adam Silver is inviting New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie to join him in lobbying Congress to rewrite federal laws on the subject.

The NBA and the other major professional sports leagues are actually fighting New Jersey in court to enforce a federal ban on most sports betting outside of Nevada. That law has been in place for more than two decades.

But during an interview on ESPN’s “Outside the Lines” that also aired on the ESPN/ABC podcast “Capital Games,” Silver said that rather than fight New Jersey and other states, his league can work with them to establish a uniform federal structure that would acknowledge that sports gambling already takes place in many venues that are far from Las Vegas sports books.

“Governor Christie, and I’m happy to join him, should turn his attention to Washington, DC, to Congress, and say, ‘Here are all the reasons it should be regulated, but let’s come up with a framework that makes sense on a national basis presumably that would allow states to opt in,’ ” Silver told ESPN’s Andy Katz.

Silver broke with his fellow American sports commissioners last month by endorsing expanded legal sports gambling in a New York Times op-ed. He told Katz that his intention was to “break the ice” to have a real conversation on the subject.

 

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Another College Adds League of Legends Scholarship Program for Competitive Gamers

The University of Pikeville has become one of the small number of American institutions of higher learning to add competitive gaming to the list of sports programs they offer scholarships for.

Yahoo! News spoke to coach and alumni Eric VanHoose, as well as Pikeville’s new media director Bruce Parsons, about the program, which plans to offere 20 scholarships for players matriculating in the Fall 2015 semester.

“It will be a regime a lot like athletics,” Parsons said. “[Students will] have to have a certain GPA. We’ll look at them like student athletes. There will be practice time and video time when they have to study other teams for upcoming competitions.”

Presumably players will also be held to certain standards of behavior in game and out, as are many student athletes in traditional sports. At least for their own sakes, if not so that they don’t run afoul of League of Legends‘ community moderators, who have not hesitated to ban professional LoL players for violations of their code of conduct. And, ladies, as a sport, the scholarships must obey Title Nine rules, so apply, apply, apply.

 

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Atlantic City Ready for a Better 2015 to Begin

BIG:Y;ears from now (and even today) when U.S. gambling historians examine 2014, they will quickly find that it was a terrible year for Atlantic City.

Four casinos closed, an eighth straight year of decreasing revenue, and an online poker and gambling regime in its first full year that went through considerable growing pains and continues to perform at revenue levels less than expected. The Showboat, Atlantic Club, Trump Plaza and Revel shutdowns put 8,000 employees out of work, while the future of the Trump Taj Mahal remains questionable.

It’s no secret that New Jersey officials are anxious to throw away that 2014 calendar and turn the page to what is expected to be a better year in 2015. How will it be better? Well, to borrow a line from John, Paul, George and Ringo, “it can’t get more worse.”

What can we expect?