The Problem:
Everyone and his brother will tell you who to start from week-to-week in fantasy football. But the decisions aren’t based on my factors of importance.
The Business
A site where you can insert your factors of importance based on 100 different factors and have an algorithm tell you who to start. It is software that allows you to input what you think is important to come up with the list of best fantasy football starts for the coming week. You might think any of the following are more or less important:
- Last week’s performance
- History vs. opponent
- Opposing team defense generally
- Opposing team defense vs. particular segment of the game
- Reversion to the mean of expected performance
- Etc. There are easily 50 factors. Possibly 100 factors
In theory, you could program the algorithm once and have it spit out your projections every single week. The insights gleaned by the system as a whole about whom to actually start would be immense. They would be easily salable.
Doableness
Fantasy football has always been big business. It’s getting bigger with the advent of weekly fantasy football – fantasy football that lasts only one week. A carve out in the online anti-gambling laws has essentially provided the ability to have fantasy football games and tournaments that last only one week. Which, ironically, is very similar to gambling.
This means even more money pouring into the space, which, in turn, means more opportunity for sophisticated tools. This is doable, but it requires a tremendous amount of programming. Tremendous amount. But it would sell.
My Thoughts
Increasingly, people want to use technology to do it themselves. I don’t want to be told what to, I want to be given the tools to do it. This is especially true about something we feel passionate about. Fantasy football is an area of passion for many.
The weekly fantasy football starter selector is an idea that, if built correctly, will attract an immense amount of interest organically. I think attention grabbing is the Internet business model zeitgeist and I think it is the the most important thing to think about when starting a new business.
Will the idea attract people’s attention? If the answer is yes, then you can worry about feasibility and the revenue model.