Fantasy Sports 2.0 interviews John Brelig, CEO of FantasyBook:

I had the pleasure of speaking with and interviewing Fantasy Book Inc’s CEO, Jon Brelig. Fantasy Book is a startup focused on bringing the fantasy sports league experience to Facebook users. Their first application is focused on Fantasy Baseball and offers an interface similar to that of Yahoo’s fantasy league offering - which is a good thing. As far as we are concerned, Yahoo offers the best fantasy league experience to sports fans. Using their model for a Facebook application is definitely a smart thing to do. I installed the application and played around with it a bit. I must say that I’m rather impressed with the experience and am excited to see how it progresses. Despite the thousands of sports apps on Facebook, none of them have really come close to cornering the fantasy leagues market. Here’s a snippet from their press release:

The application is the first to offer the full spectrum of fantasy sport features including live drafts, live scoring, trading, player stats, and advanced commissioner controls. While a number of sport applications currently reside on Facebook, none have offered a fully fledged Fantasy Sports experience.

As the platform continues to evolve and richer applications become available, it’s going to be very interesting to see what type of experience sports applications can offer fans.

1. What is Fantasy Book and who are the people behind it?
FantasyBook was founded with the aim to fill the gap in social network applications and provide a fully fledged fantasy sports application. Jon Brelig founded the company along with co-founders Ben Standefer and Andy Lammers, all three good friends and former colleagues at IBM in Texas. Jon is also the founder and owner of SkiReport.com, a top 10 online ski portal. FantasyBook received seed funding by Bay Partners as part of their AppFactory Program (http://www.baypartners.com/appfactory/) in December 2007.

2. When and how did things start?
Last September, I browsed the applications on Facebook expecting to find a fantasy football app to setup my league for the season. Surprisingly no application existed and the goal to fill that gap started. By December 2007, we were seed funded, incorporated, and started coding every day.

3. What is the current status of Fantasy Book?
We released the first fully featured Facebook Fantasy Sports application with the launch of Fantasy Baseball 2008 in March. We’ve also released an easy and fun Salary Cap Baseball game catered to the casual fan. Currently we have ~10k users between the applications and plan to launch two other baseball related sports application within two weeks. Soon the focus will shift solely to the Fantasy Football application to be released in early August.

4. What are your future plans for Fantasy Book?
As of now, our focus is really just looking towards the release of our Facebook Fantasy Football. Pending the outcome of Fantasy Football, we will re-evaluate our and plan our future direction.

5. What is your products competitive advantage? How will you compete with Yahoo, ESPN, and CBS Sportsline? Providing the Fantasy Sports experience within Facebook amplifies the social aspect as well as simply being convenient for users. One issue with Fantasy Sport applications today is all users are masked behind obscure screen names, while the Facebook platform provides real names and photos. Price is another factor as current fantasy sport providers charge premium rates for advanced services such as live scoring, which we plan to offer free of charge for Fantasy Football 2008. While it may be difficult to compete on the multitude of features competitors offer, we aim to cater to casual fans who want a convenient and social atmosphere to play fantasy sports.

6. What is your vision for the future of fantasy sports?
On one extreme, advanced sport games will continue to elevate fantasy sports to new heights catering to the growing population of Fantasy Sport addicts. While on the other end of the spectrum, the social network platform has the ability to provide a very social and convenient environment for casual Fantasy Sport users.

Tags: FantasyBook

First Fantasy Sports Application Launches on Facebook

San Francisco, CA - March 18, 2008 - FantasyBook, Inc., a developer of advanced sports related applications for social networks, launched the first full-featured fantasy sports application on Facebook with the release of Fantasy Baseball 2008. The application is the first to offer the full spectrum of fantasy sport features including live drafts, live scoring, trading, player stats, and advanced commissioner controls. While a number of sport applications currently reside on Facebook, none have offered a fully fledged Fantasy Sports experience.

Similar features are provided by market leaders Yahoo and CBS Sportsline, however FantasyBook aims to capitalize on the social aspects of fantasy sports by offering the experience through a social network. “Fantasy sports is naturally a social game,” explains CEO Jon Brelig. “Integrating with a popular social network and amplifying the social aspects of the game is the logical next step.”

The Facebook platform allows users to benchmark their teams’ performance among friends or everyone in their network, expanding the fantasy experience outside the traditional confines of each fantasy league. This particular functionality is a great example of what the platform offers and is only available within the Facebook atmosphere. Other benefits include friends’ real names and photos seamlessly integrated into the application preventing user confusion. “One issue with fantasy sports is users do not have a clear picture of which friends own each team,” explains CTO Ben Standefer. “In the past, everyone has remained masked behind obscure screen names making it difficult to attribute fantasy league activity to the friends you know and interact with in real life.”

Convenience and price are other factors fantasy commissioners should consider prior to setting up their leagues. All features on Fantasy Baseball 2008, including the live score tracker, are free of charge. With the launch of Fantasy Baseball 2008 and the upcoming launch of Fantasy Football this fall, FantasyBook is hoping to capture a portion of the 19.4 million fantasy sport users across US and Canada. Along with Fantasy Baseball, FantasyBook is also announcing the release of Salary Cap Baseball, an easy-to-use fantasy application catered to the casual fan. To add the applications or for more information, you can visit www.fantasybookinc.com.

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About FantasyBook, Inc.
FantasyBook, Inc. develops advanced sport related applications for social networks with an emphasis on fantasy sports. Please visit www.fantasybookinc.com for the list of applications and more information.

Media Contact Information
Jon Brelig
CEO, FantasyBook, Inc.
jon@fantasybookinc.com

Tags: FantasyBook