Furthermore, fantasy baseball was the inspiration behind all fantasy sports. I'm sure there was a group of 10 people back in the era when spitballs were legal, and all they did was pretend to be baseball GMs and trade players. Of course, I'm sure they didn't do all that work on the computer, unless the stat was a 0 or a 1.
Had the judge ruled in favor of MLB, it would probably cripple fantasy leagues to the point that the fantasy baseball population would dwindle down to — well — the real MLB general managers who were fired. Then it may have opened the oh-so-inviting door for the other leagues to follow suit and piledrive fantasy sports everywhere, inflicing a permanent concussion on the industry.
MLB will probably appeal the ruling. Because as we've already discussed, they can afford the court costs since they got a bunch of free money from ESPN, Yahoo and CBS.
Article comments
1 - Ty
Yahoo does have a pay version, and many other leagues have a yahoo tiered set up (free stripped down version, a pay great version).
MLB just wanted to cash in on that. I don't blame them, but they had a weak legal argument.
2 - Maddux
Thank God MLB lost this case. You would think that the MLB and NFL would realize that because fantasy football makes their product more profitable. All this suit did was make those leagues even more money hungry than they already are.
3 - Matthew T. Sussman
What are the advantages to paid Yahoo fantasy games? Does Bill James personally tell you who to start each night?
4 - paul
Don't the big 3 get other rights besides the stats, such as using photographs, etc?