The Problem:
There isn’t a list of incentives in athlete contracts. As seasons draw to a close, I’d like to know who needs what to get bonuses.
The Business
Analyze all incentive clauses in athlete contracts for all major sports. Keep track of the incentives and the performance that will either lead to receiving the bonus or not receiving it. It can simply be a contract website. You could send updates as milestones are near or are reached.
Doableness
You’d need to analyze all contracts, either by hand or digitally. Then you need to get the stat feeds to track progress toward the incentive milestones. I think it could be a two-person job. It comes down to: Would their be enough interest, and therefore enough revenue, to support the site as a profitable – tiny – business.
My Thoughts
I used to read Cot’s Baseball Contracts way back in the day. Google “MLB contracts” and it was always the number one result. It used to have a blogspot domain. It now has a full domain, but still appears to be blogger hosted. I used to think I’d make the guy an offer for his site.
It seems, at some point, Baseball Prospectus did just that…made him an offer. They appear to own Cot’s baseball contract. They are the most likely candidates to execute on my idea. I’d love to see them do it.
One issue – how to protect your work. You put in the hard work of finding the incentives and monitoring the progress. Sure others could copy your concept, and that’s legit competition. I could be wrong, but I think that issue is solved by the lack of large revenue likely coming from this idea. It’s a small-time business. As for how to protect your copyright, that’s a pretty standard problem. One that I am anticipating how I will deal with regarding yesterday’s idea.