I know this is a bit early, but... Does anyone know if there will be a fantasy MLS league this year? Originally it was hosted by Yahoo! and I thought it was a lot of fun. Despite Yahoo! being a league sponsor at some level, Sporting News became the host for the fantasy game last year. I have tried the Yahoo!, Sporting News and ESPN fantasy soccer leagues for the EPL, and have been happiest with the Yahoo league. In the Sporting News league, at least for the EPL, you could buy as many transfers as you could afford and changed your team every day, thus getting a new team for every day that had matches. My father realized this way before me and jumped out to a ridiculous lead by spending a ridiculous amount on transfers. Cleary this is to the financial gain of the league host, but it ruined the game for me. I like the restrictiveness of the ESPN league. It seemed much more difficult to make major roster, more realistic. I found the scoring boring however, too dependent on goals. The Yahoo league isn't perfect, but it is the best of the ones I have tried. Your team is locked in for the week, starting on friday. The one problem I had when the MLS league was on Yahoo was that the MLS schedule is quite as regular as the EPL schedule, at least at that time. So it seemed like some team always had a game in hand and half the teams were playing two games and half just one game, so you picked your team based on the schedule rather than the absolute best players. Fox Sports World also has a league, maybe just for EPL, but I haven't tried that. Maybe even BigSoccer.com has one, and I am sure someone would be kind enough to point that out to me. Btw, no, I am not a Yahoo employee, although I do own a few shares.
in addition, i would imagine that mlsnet.com will be doing it again... they started it last year after yahoo didn't do it, i believe it started a bit late or at least last minute... but i would expect them to have that ready much sooner this go round
I have always thought that MLS shoudl partner with MFLS...they have a great product and it has been around for a while...
I've played the Yahoo, Sporting News and MFLS versions over the past few years. Last year's Sporting News game was definitely one of the best. MFLS is in need of a system and software upgrade. I got tired of it quickly. MLS should really reassess the value of these fantasy games. You can't tell me that the huge growth in fantasy football hasn't helped the NFL's popularity enormously. It seems like MLS' interest to date has been kind of haphazard and tossed off. The games always seem to be announced at the last moment or a few weeks into the season even.
I agree with JKorzen, that the league needs to appreciate the potential of these fantasy leagues. Fantasy leagues increase fans knowledge of players on other teams, increase the chance of fans watching teams other than their home team, and can maintain their interest in the league even after their home team has lost all hope of making the playoffs (Not quite as much of a concern in MLS since almost everyone makes it). The official fantasy league gets decent advertisement on mlsnet.com, but I remember thinking it seemed very last minute last year.
and They need to have a live draft this time around. It gets boring when you can't make trades, and you see the same players on each team. I usually just sign up out of obligation. It's time for MLS to step it up and give us an NFL quality fantasy game..
I didn't do it last year, but I thought the Yahoo game was just fine. I like the idea of a salary cap kind of thing. Of course I say that because I lucked out and had Alex Pineda Chacon in the 2001 game from week one and lived off of his points all year.
this year is gonna be fun. i'm not running the flmls this year though do to a contract with my former employer not to, i'll be back in 3 years though. So i'll be working on kicking all your butts in TSN's and MFLS. Just teasing about kicking all your butts, but seriously can't wait for this year.
Did The Sporting News ever send out prizes after last season's competion? I won a mini-soccer ball or T-shirt -- I forget which -- but never received anything in the mail from the Sporting News.
I think mfls is the best fantasy game I've ever played. Can't imagine what anyone thinks is wrong with it. And it gives you a reason to watch games you wouldn't care about otherwise (as has been pointed out above).
I just think its kind of dull, clunky interface for one thing. It hasn't changed or been improved noticeably in a couple years. Plus the server seemed to be down frequently. Personally I thought the sportingnews' game was pretty well done. I really liked the whole buying players cheap and selling them high. I guess there is sort of a similiar model on mfls. I never did get my prize from sportingnews though! punx! I agree with whoever brought up the live draft idea and making the game more like fantasy football where only one person can have a certain player on his team. That would definitely be more entertaining. So anyway, my point was that MLS might consider investing in its own fantasy game as a means of holding onto current MLS fans. Aside from the already mentioned perk of getting fans interested in games outside their home team, they would be getting a nice registered user base to brag about to advertisers. I'm sure it would be money well spent.
I work for Sportsline and helped create what is now the Commissioner.COM fantasy sports series. We are the best in fantasy sports, hands down. The Sporting News MLS game was pretty good but the concept of a salary cap game is nothing new. And not getting prizes out to their users is also a story heard time and time again in this buisness.
Maybe I should have said mfls is the best FREE fantasy game I've ever played (but with games like this around I would never pay to play one). I think it has just the right balance concerning things like transfers (too many and it gets silly, too few and it's boring), it rewards balanced teams, you get to choose the look of your team's homepage, etc. It's pretty subjective I suppose, but whoever does it deserves credit for providing a great game for nothing.
I want to see more MLS fantasy games come out where there is a draft instead of just picking players w/ a salary cap. With a draft, there is much more strategy involved in picking your players and getting a balanced team. Too few fantasy games for MLS have a draft, the only one that did was flmls and it wasn't free, and I guess it won't be comming back this season. A BS poster here, morcheeba, said that he was starting a fantasy game for this season which would be like flmls, with a draft I'm guessing. On top of that I heard it will be free this season. IF this new game is pulled of well, I think it could be the best fantasy game, a draft adds so much.
I played the Yahoo! NBA Fantasy two years (won my group the second year) and would LOVE to see similar options in whatever MLS Fantasy is endorsed by MLS. The best part of it is a psuedo-draft. You pre-rank the players you like/prefer before a set deadline. Then, the Fantasy software runs a draft automatically at midnight on the deadline date. You get automatically put in a random group of 9 other people (or sign up as a group where you know the other 9 fools) and when the draft is complete, you can make changes by snagging free agents or trading with other teams. Ideally, you would then be scheduled a home-and-away series of matches with everyone in your group (18 weeks) after which 2 players would be eliminated from the playoffs (3 more weeks -- or 6 weeks with each round lasting 2 weeks). As far as scoring goes, the phoney systems for garnering points at Yahoo!, MFLS, and Sporting News are terrible IMHO. Rather, why not just have the following: If only someone offered this format...
Great Zar, you mentioned point system, the league i'm putting together is something like that. If you haven't seen any of my previous posts in a couple other fantasy game threads, I'm working with a company right now to design a game, it should be out kind of last minute though. It will be free this year. It is also a combination of the True Score Fantasy Soccer (circa 98?) and of the FLMLS. I loved playing both of those and since FLMLS is not up this year (I emailed the former owner of it and he told me that his former company took the rights from him and now they aren't running anything), so I decided to see what I can do. I might put up a cheesy site on geocities so everyone can see what the details are of the league. The company putting it together for me has promised me that it should be done by mid march. It will have a live draft and if you can not make the draft a draft list will be submitted. It's also a head2head league. email me at worldfantasyfootie@yahoo.com if you want to know anything else.
I like the MFLS overall. But the whole points system needs to be refinded. And, no offense to those who have put hard work into getting things work on the back end, it's user interface is absolutely attrocious.
Re: Re: MLS Fantasy Soccer 2003 What I dislike about the MFLS point system is that it is too easy to lose points, I agree that it should be adjuted a bit. It seemed like most of the players were in negative points by the end of the season...
It would be great if you could post the rules of your fantasy game on a geocities site so we could atleast see what the game would be like and be able to prepare for the draft.
I like MFLS. Well I may be a bit biased since I won my 20 team group after joining a month late and coming in second was a friend of mine who joined even later, I can't wait to sign-up for next season. That said, I do like the idea of a live draft better.
MLS Fantasy Challenge Gang: TSN is teaming up with MLS again in 2003 to produce the MLS FC. Launch will be the first week in March (soon!). Some notes on the game: 1) Multiple Formations - Unlike last year, participants will have the opportunity to choose between 3-5-2, 4-4-2, and 4-4-3 formations. 2) Daily Player Value Updates - Based on demand, a MLS player's value will fluctuate daily as opposed to only Wednesday and Saturday. 3) Significant Mid Season Prize(s) - In an effort to create some excitement during the season, the mid-season leader will receive a pretty freakin' cool prize (trust me). 4) MLSFC Espanol - We will be publishing a basic overview in Spanish. 5) Trade Cap - In an effort to even the playing field, a cap will be set to limit the number of trades allowed. This is a labor of love for me. Like you, I'm a fan of the MLS, and I want it to succeed badly. The league needs your participation in games like this, and we're doing everything we can to make the game compelling. If you have any questions, feel free to email me (ebarmack@sportingnews.com) or post here. As for the prizes last year -- we did distribute prizes to every eligible participant who faxed in their forms. We DID have an issue with the time it took to send some prizes because we were moving offices, and we simply took too long to get the prizes out. I don't see the same problem emerging this year. That's it for now. Again, we're geeked. We just finished player pricing, and I've started assembling my XI. -ESB GM/TSN Games