NFBC Message Boards

We're VERY proud to announce tonight that the NFBC and NFFC will be featured prominently each week on SiriusXM's Fantasy Channel with our very own show. This is a great vehicle to promote our pay-to-play contests. The 2-hour show will be broadcast every Wednesday from 7-9 pm ET and will feature Greg Ambrosius and Tom Kessenich as co-hosts. The show will be called the STATS Fantasy Advantage and will give listeners every advantage we can provide to win their leagues.

STATS Fantasy Advantage will also give us a chance to feature our top players each week on this show. We'll lead off next week with 2012 NFBC champion Dave Potts talking about his exciting run to the $100,000 grand prize. We may even feature two NFBC owners per week on our show.

The debut show took place live from the FSTA Conference at the Mirage in Las Vegas yesterday. That show is available online to listen to at anytime if you are a subscriber to SiriusXM's Fantasy Channel. That's a nice feature that SiriusXM has added and I'm sure it will allow many of their listeners to now catch us at anytime during the week.

Again, I know I can speak for everyone here at the NFBC and STATS when I say that we are ECSTATIC to be part of the SiriusXM team. For one thing, it's a FANTASTIC promotional vehicle to spread the word about our online and live contests. We've already seen new people sign up for our games just after the first show and Tom and I both have plenty of new Twitter followers as a result. We know this is going to expand our NFBC and NFFC audiences and it's going to bring in new players. But we also know that our content that we're providing -- led by the Average Draft Positions that you guys help us generate through so many early season Draft Champions Leagues -- is going to provide valuable content to their listeners. And now that we're part of their team, every news story involving a player involves his ADP in the NFBC. All of the other Fantasy Channel hosts also have our ADPs and can reference them throughout their shows. We are getting GREAT exposure on SiriusXM now that we're part of their team.

This show will also allow us to feature many of our top players. We'll gladly let you folks become the stars of this industry through your appearances on SiriusXM. And during the season, the entire nation will know who is leading our national contests and we'll make sure they hear from you during the stretch run when so much money is on the line.

And SiriusXM is going to broadcast live from our events more regularly as part of this deal. I'll go into more detail on that later, but obviously they love the Diamond Leagues and they really like making our NFBC and NFFC part of their National Fantasy Baseball Draft Day and their National Fantasy Football Draft Day. We'll have a big part in all of that leading up to those big days where our live drafts are taking place. Live reports from Las Vegas and New York City are a given, plus more. Stay tuned.

And while we're happy to have this exposure two hours a week -- along with our continued guest appearances on Rotowire.com's show and other shows -- we think our content is second to none. That's not bragging, it's just that we know our ADPs are the best info that their listeners can get. I thought we knocked it out of the park yesterday with our first show and some of the STATS statistics we gave on the air were fantastic. We have a research team looking up some unique numbers for our show each week and you'll like what they uncover. I'll post a few of them shortly. The one on Mike Trout's month of July was really something interesting. Great stuff.

Okay, here's the official press release. I'll post more details once I finally get settled back in. It's been a hectic week, but it's all good. This is one new piece that we'll be able to provide before our 10th anniversary season. This one is really shaping up as a great, great season and now thousands of new fantasy players will learn all about us through STATS Fantasy Advantage.

Thanks for having us SiriusXM. We're honored to be part of this great team.


STATS Fantasy Advantage comes to SiriusXM Fantasy Radio

Northbrook, IL – January 23, 2013 – STATS LLC, the world’s leading sports technology, information and content provider, today announced that the brain trust of its industry-leading high-stakes fantasy game series will be hosting a show on SiriusXM’s fantasy sports station (XM-87, Sirius-210) called STATS Fantasy Advantage. Full details of the STATS Fantasy Advantage show including bios, contact information and the on-air schedule can be found at: http://www.statsfantasyadvantage.com.

Hosted by veteran fantasy sports experts Greg Ambrosius and Tom Kessenich, STATS Fantasy Advantage will provide inside information from STATS’ industry-leading high stakes contests, including updated Average Draft Positions and top free agent pickups. Greg and Tom will interview the champions in high stakes fantasy sports to provide the draft and roster management strategies that have led to hundreds of thousands of dollars in prize earnings. STATS Fantasy Advantage will also provide insights into the match-ups, trends and unique analysis that STATS provides to its professional team and broadcast clients.

“We are excited to talk fantasy sports with the only audience that is as passionate about fantasy as our high stakes contestants, and that is the audience at SiriusXM Fantasy Radio. This is a great opportunity to talk fantasy sports and provide insights with information that was previously reserved for STATS’ clients in professional sports and broadcasting,” said Greg Ambrosius, STATS General Manager of Consumer Fantasy Games and an inductee of both the Fantasy Sports Trade Association and Fantasy Sports Writers Association Hall of Fames.

The National Fantasy Baseball Championship (NFBC), National Fantasy Football Championship (NFFC) and National Fantasy Basketball Championship (NFBKC) originated in 2004 as the industry's first multi-city, live high-stakes events. In nine seasons, more than $15 million in prizes have been paid out between baseball, football and basketball.

About STATS LLC

STATS is the world's leading sports technology, data and content company. The company passionately abides by a mission to revolutionize the way sports contests are viewed, understood and enjoyed. STATS’ calling card consists of real-time scores, historical sports information, Associated Press editorial content, a turnkey fantasy sports operation and SportVU technology. Today, STATS’ worldwide client network of media companies and professional sports leagues and teams utilize a broad spectrum of dynamic in-game broadcast presentations and virtual images, multimedia enhancements and game analysis and tactical coaching tools. STATS is owned jointly by the Associated Press and News Corporation, with corporate offices across the globe. For a complete tour of STATS’ sports content portfolio and solutions, visit http://www.stats.com.

Listening right now via siriusXM.com

Congrats on hitting the big time!

CONGRATULATIONS - a great move for all concerned


PVH

Love the promotional opportunity to introduce high stakes to a bigger and younger audience. Knock 'em dead Greg and Tom and let's get this to a $200K contest in a few years!

Good for Siruis too, I'll have to re-open my account.

It's like listening to old friends on the radio.
Congrats Greg!

Congrats Greg, Tom, I'm sure it'll be a great show that can only benefit the NFBC & NFFC specifically and high stakes fantasy sports in general. I'm sure this feels like a nice reward for the 10 years of hard work you put into making this contest what it is today.

DOUGHBOYS wrote:It's like listening to old friends on the radio.
Congrats Greg!

Thanks everyone and be prepared to be guests on our show!! We are going to show what a great community of fantasy players we have and give them a good reason to join us. Please give us feedback on the first show and let us know what you like and what you don't like. We'll add some new elements to the show once we expand to 2 hours, but I thought the first show went well and I know that SiriusXM loved the content.

Tom and I are talking just like we talk every day around the office. This is easy stuff and fun.

You and Tom sounded great. It was hard to tell that it was your first show. You both had smooth delivery and command... You got a lot of qualified data and STats to work with as well as the best fantasy players/customers bar none to bring on as guests. The only caution I would raise is not to "scare" novice/new players... You Dont want those potential thousands of new customers feeling they are playing with sharks. Might want to consider some sort of lower priced options for newer players to get thier feet wet, such as 25/50 dollar buyins. Should be a great listen all year long...XM is lucky to have the best of the best.

This is great for the NFBC, congrats Greg and Tom! I am very excited to be on the show with you next week.

I was privileged to congratulate Greg and Tom in person and honored go be invited as a guest on the debut show. Good luck guys and thanks again for your support.

Congrats to everyone at STATS. Refreshing to see hard work and determination pay off.

Outlaw wrote:You and Tom sounded great. It was hard to tell that it was your first show. You both had smooth delivery and command... You got a lot of qualified data and STats to work with as well as the best fantasy players/customers bar none to bring on as guests. The only caution I would raise is not to "scare" novice/new players... You Dont want those potential thousands of new customers feeling they are playing with sharks. Might want to consider some sort of lower priced options for newer players to get thier feet wet, such as 25/50 dollar buyins. Should be a great listen all year long...XM is lucky to have the best of the best.

Congratulations, I look forward to listening in. In respect to the point above I believe this would be a great opportunity to promote the NFBC XII, I am an example of the novice being able to compete with the big boys. The 12 team format is a great entry point for those unfamiliar with the NFBC. Without the NFBC XII I would've been done with fantasy baseball because of my inability to compete. This format allows the player who is not as experienced to compete without having to go massively deep into the player pool.

Again, congratulations and I look forward to the show. The current content never interested me because I knew there were many others here that knew so much more.

is there a podcast?? or another option to listen to the inaugural show, thanks!

RoundTrippers wrote:is there a podcast?? or another option to listen to the inaugural show, thanks!

I signed up but could not find the show - Greg, do you have a download of the audio you could share with us?

All I have been to see is the abiltity to replay the show within 6 hrs or so of when it aired. They do archive some shows, but I did not see the STATS show as one of them. They do not seem to archive all broadcasts though.

Congrats, time to take it to the next level. Now I need to go get Sirius XM

Money wrote:

Outlaw wrote:You and Tom sounded great. It was hard to tell that it was your first show. You both had smooth delivery and command... You got a lot of qualified data and STats to work with as well as the best fantasy players/customers bar none to bring on as guests. The only caution I would raise is not to "scare" novice/new players... You Dont want those potential thousands of new customers feeling they are playing with sharks. Might want to consider some sort of lower priced options for newer players to get thier feet wet, such as 25/50 dollar buyins. Should be a great listen all year long...XM is lucky to have the best of the best.

Congratulations, I look forward to listening in. In respect to the point above I believe this would be a great opportunity to promote the NFBC XII, I am an example of the novice being able to compete with the big boys. The 12 team format is a great entry point for those unfamiliar with the NFBC. Without the NFBC XII I would've been done with fantasy baseball because of my inability to compete. This format allows the player who is not as experienced to compete without having to go massively deep into the player pool.

Again, congratulations and I look forward to the show. The current content never interested me because I knew there were many others here that knew so much more.

These are both very good points and we totally get your points. There is no doubt that we are going to reach a brand new audience of dedicated fantasy players, but we don't expect them all to just jump into our Main Events right away. We really need to introduce them to some of our entry level leagues and get them into the community first and playing on our site first. It's one of the reasons we added 10-team NFBC leagues this year. Listen, a lot of these listeners play 10-team leagues. If you ever hear their questions to us when we're on as guests, they often say "I'm in a 10-team league and I have a trade proposal for...." It's crazy how many 10-team leagues there are across the country. So we now have 10-team satellite leagues starting as low as $100 that I think will appeal to this audience. Our 12-team leagues have entry points as low as $150 and our 15-team satellite leagues have an entry point as low as $125. All three levels pay out 80%, which is higher than they'll find on sites like CBS Sports.

So while I understand the idea that we need low entry points to attract these users, I think we already have that in place. In the very near future, I think we'll need to look at a 10-team national contest of some kind. I have a great idea for football and maybe we'll debut it there. I think it has great potential, but we'll see if we can do it with the technology we have in place. Stay tuned.

One suggestion from an NFBC owner is to create some satellite leagues that allow only first year members or just Sirius newbies. You know, compete against others who haven't played in the NFBC before. That idea would be just for a satellite league or two, which makes sense. I'll look into that possibility once we get more people on the Message Boards. There are a lot of creative things we can do now that we're reaching a large audience.

We hear ya loud and clear. It's great to have this opportunity to reach such a large audience. We had that with our magazine years ago, but those numbers were falling each year and eventually it reached a point where it didn't make financial sense. This replaces that promotional opportunity and allows us to spread the word using fantastic data that is generated from our leagues. And it's the most timely information SiriusXM can have, so we all win. Thanks for the feedback all and keep it coming. We'll implement all good ideas where we can.

RoundTrippers wrote:is there a podcast?? or another option to listen to the inaugural show, thanks!

Since this is a subscription service, they don't allow you to post your show anywhere as a podcast. I totally understand that reasoning. They want more subscribers and at $15 or so a month I think they're going to get a few more now from our NFBC and NFFC communities!!

And remember, we also get to promote fantasy basketball on this show year-round and then promote our hoops contest that we resurrected this year. All three sports are going to get plenty of exposure now and I'm sure our numbers for all three contests will improve as a result.

KJ Duke wrote:

RoundTrippers wrote:is there a podcast?? or another option to listen to the inaugural show, thanks!

I signed up but could not find the show - Greg, do you have a download of the audio you could share with us?

I know this Sirius Everywhere feature is new and I think Mike is right that they post the shows within 2 hours of it airing and then leave it on for a day or so. Obviously they can't keep every show on forever, but I'll see if they do archive them somewhere for subscribers. Tom and I are just now getting set up with this new feature, so we don't even know everything about it.

One of the things we talked about doing together was broadcasting the NFBC Diamond League live from Las Vegas. Unfortunately, because that is being held on the First Weekend this year in Las Vegas we won't be able to do that because SiriusXM had already committed to broadcasting the Tout War auctions in New York City. They are doing that on Saturday and Sunday, March 23-24.

However, we are talking with them about broadcasting live from New York City on March 29-30. I know we do have this high profile Super League on Friday night out there and we'll see what we can do around that one if Mikey's group promises to behave!! But more likely is that we'll have a crew there during Saturday's drafts and have live reports from all of our live Main Events that day. We did this last year in the NFFC as Sirius billed this the National Fantasy Football Draft Day, with live reports from the NFFC live events. It worked great and they are billing Saturday, March 30th as National Fantasy Baseball Draft Day. So look for more details there.

I think it's a definite that we will be broadcasting the NFFC Diamond League live from Las Vegas in September. So again, we have some great possibilities here and soon you folks will be household names. Hey, it started slow with the World Series of Poker, but eventually it hit TV screens and the pots just kept getting bigger and bigger. We'll gladly start with live radio broadcasts of our biggest contests and then take it to more visible mediums in future years, right?

One of the neat features we're going to have on the STATS Fantasy Advantage each week is a segment we haven't officially titled yet, but it will be something like STATS FACTS or Did You Know? Something like that. We will be bringing Sam Lubeck of STATS on the air with us during the first hour each week and diving into some factoids involving the subject we're leading off with each week. This week we wanted to talk about Mike Trout, so Sam did some digging and gave us these facts. These are pretty damn cool:

Mike Trout, 2012 Stats

129 Runs - t-9th most by rookie, most since 1939 (Ted Williams 131)
.564 Slug % - 13th highest all-time, highest since 2001 (Pujols .610)
30 HR & 49 SB - no rookie with 30+ HR had ever had more than 27 SB
- no rookie with 49+ SB had ever had more than 17 HR
- 3rd most SB all-time by hitter with 30+ HR (Barry Bonds, 52 in 1990, Eric Davis, 50 in 1987)

In July alone, Trout had 32 runs, 10 HR, 23 RBI, 9 SB and a .392 BA. Since 1921, no other player has had a single month with those minimum stats.

Of the last 4 Rookie of the Year Award-winning hitters, only Evan Longoria improved his numbers the season after winning the award.

Rookie of Year Hitters, with Stats the Following Season

Buster Posey
2010 .305 BA, 18 HR, 67 RBI
2011 .284 BA, 4 HR, 21 RBI

Chris Coghlan
2009 .321 BA, 84 runs, 9 HR, 47 RBI
2010 .268 BA, 60 runs, 5 HR, 28 RBI

Evan Longoria
2008 .272 BA, 27 HR, 85 RBI, 67 runs
2009 .281 BA, 33 HR, 113 RBI, 100 runs

Geovany Soto
2008 .285 BA, 23 HR, 86 RBI
2009 .218 BA, 11 HR, 47 RBI

So his July was the greatest single month in MLB history using fantasy's categories since 1921. Damn, I hadn't heard that one before. Awesome.

And so you don't think his numbers can go down next year? Well, there is precedence for Rookie of the Year winners falling flat the next year. Now granted, guys like Ryan Braun, Albert Pujols and Mike Piazza had solid sophomore seasons, but you can see what we're looking at here. It's not a given that he just picks up where he left off last year.

Enjoy the data. It's fun to look at.

RoundTrippers wrote:is there a podcast?? or another option to listen to the inaugural show, thanks!

Here's a couple of tips regarding XM.

If you already have XM in a car or a home based unit, you can add internet radio to listen on a computer, tablet, phone, almost any device that has internet access for 3.50 a month. You add the serivce on your XM radio account page. you can cancel at anytime also. If you google XM Deals you will find all sorts of information on very low subscription rates, especially for new customers. I have seen it as low as 24.00 for 6 months to activate a new radio. Just getting XM online is however expensive at like 13-15.00 a month. Aslo there are plenty of ways to get Cheap renewal prices once new customer deals expire, just google XM Deals for that too. One thing XM deals with is a fairly high churn rate and they will do anything to retain a current customer when you mention cancel. With XM you also get the all the MLB radio feeds during the season.

Awesome news Greg/Tom/STATS!!!! Congrats

Just a heads up that STATS Fantasy Advantage will air every Wednesday from 8 to 10 pm ET starting this week. We were originally going to be slated for 7-9 pm ET for a few weeks before changing times, but apparently that change has happened earlier than expected. I guess that LaDainian Tomlinson had his own show from 8-10 pm ET and we are filling in that spot now. Sorry LT, but Greg and Tom are moving in!!

Tune in this Wednesday for a great, great show:

8 pm ET - We're going to lead off by talking about this week's news, including the Justin Upton trade, Alex Rodriguez's surgery and more. We'll read some feedback from NFBC owners IF we get some good ones!! Post your thoughts on our poll thread and find out if you were chosen for the on air mention.

8:15 pm ET - After our first break, we'll bring in 2012 NFBC Champion Dave Potts to talk about his great accomplishment last year and find out how he put it all together last year. We'll also ask him about this upcoming season and see if he will throw out any nuggets on players he's targeting (I doubt it!!). We'll have Dave on for that entire second segment.

8:30 pm ET - We'll take some callers in the second half hour and talk about our incredible Draft Champions format. I think a lot of folks will be interested in this format and why it's become so popular. We might even bring in a guest to talk about this crazy format and what you need to do to win in a DC.

9:15 pm ET - We have NFBC Hall of Famer Stephen Jupinka lined up for the second hour, which should be great. There's so much to talk about with Steve, who seems to dominate in baseball, football and any other sport we throw out there. This should be a fun talk with Mr. Jupinka

In the second hour we're also going to give Tom a chance to unveil his early NFFC rankings through the Top 50 or so and we'll even talk a little fantasy basketball. Roger Gonzalez is leading our Main Event and our Online Championship in the NFBKC and we'll give him a plug and fantasy hoops a plug. Should be great fun.

This is the type of format we'll provide each week, so be ready to join us. It should be FUN!!! And after this show, I think we'll have plenty of new players looking to get into Draft Champions Leagues!! That contest is ready to BLOW OUT!!

See ya on Wednesday.

If you want to call into the show on Wednesday night, here's the call-in number:

http://fantasyadvantage.stats.com/

This page also has bio info on your two good looking hosts!! These are faces made for radio!!