WhatIfSports.com
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| URL | www.whatifsports.com |
|---|---|
| Commercial? | Yes |
| Type of site | Sports simulation |
| Registration | Optional |
| Owner | News Corporation |
| Created by | Tarek Kamil |
| Launched | 1999 |
| Current status | Active |
WhatIfSports.com is a company based in Cincinnati, Ohio, U.S. that specializes in online sports simulations and fantasy-style games. With their custom sports simulators, users can match teams from any era and not only see a final score, but complete play-by-play of each game. These simulations can be run for free, or users can build fictitious teams consisting of players from every generation and join leagues with their friends for a fee. Unlike traditional fantasy sports, WhatIfSports does not rely on what real players do each day to determine their results. They simulate each game by looking at each player's combined stats from previous seasons. The site won the 2005 Webby award as the best sports website and claims more than 400,000 users as of 2006.
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[edit] Company history
Founded in 1999, WhatIfSports was a side project of a couple of sports fans working for a computer consulting company in Cincinnati, Ohio. After numerous lunchroom debates on which great historical baseball teams would win if they could play each other, a few guys decided to up the ante. At the height of the dot-com bubble, they decided to undertake the challenge of trying to write an advanced baseball simulator (along the lines of Strat-O-Matic and APBA) that would work on a website.
An early version of the baseball simulator was up and running by fall of 1999. The next challenge was college basketball. Just in time for March Madness in spring of 2000, the college basketball simulator went online. This caught the attention of the local media when the simulator said the University of Cincinnati would have made the Final Four if one of its players had not broken his leg.
While continuing with the consulting work to pay the bills, WhatIfSports remained a side project until the company landed its first major license with Major League Baseball in 2001. The license put the baseball simulator on MLB.com and put WhatIfSports on the map.
In the years that followed, the WhatIfSports project began earning more money than the computer consulting work, as more and more companies began trimming back their information technology budgets. In 2003 WhatIfSports was officially incorporated; a growing staff was able to introduce new simulators for football, NBA basketball, hockey, and stock car racing.
After two more years of continuous growth, WhatIfSports was acquired by Fox Interactive Media in the fall of 2005. This was around the same time Fox bought other properties such as MySpace, IGN and Scout.com.
[edit] Games
[edit] SimMatchup
WhatIfSports offers anyone a "test drive" of their simulators at no cost in a section called SimMatchUp. Users choose to play any two baseball teams against each other going back to the 1885, NFL football teams back to 1941, NHL hockey teams back to 1917, and NBA basketball teams back to 1950. All simulators produce complete box scores and full play-by-play.
[edit] SimLeagues
For a fee varying between $8USD to $25USD depending on the sport, users can draft their own teams consisting of any player from any generation and join leagues with other people. All leagues play full seasons (by today's standards) with playoffs. Complete stats are tracked for all players and teams.
The baseball simleague offers the opportunity for World Series champions and losers to compete in a monthly tournament of champions based on salary cap used for the team. Each tournament winner recieves $250USD in prizes.
[edit] Dynasty games
[edit] Hoops Dynasty
This game gives users a taste of what it's like to coach college basketball at an American university. The user takes over in Division III and can recruit players, hand out scholarships, control practices and coach games. The user tries to build a successful program to attract job offers from Division II and Division I schools. For most users, the ultimate goal is to get a Division I job and win the national title, although users can stay in lower divisions and build a dynasty there, as well.
[edit] Gridiron Dynasty
This game simulates what it's like to coach college football. The simulation works much the same as Hoops Dynasty, with the user starting in Division III and trying to move up to higher divisions by building a successful program through recruiting, coaching and administration.
[edit] Hardball Dynasty
Hardball Dynasty is a relatively new simulation game on the site. It gives users the ability to run a baseball franchise (from the major league level all the way down to rookie league) and have complete control over personnel decisions, lineups, pitch counts, etc. In essence, it is a more sophisticated version of the MLB simulation. It has a yearly draft with both foreign and U.S. players as well as user interaction via trades and a league trash-talk/message board. Although all of the kinks have not yet been worked out, it is still by far the most comprehensive and time-consuming game on the site and offers much that not even the baseball sim has at this point.
[edit] Clutch Racing
This simulation allows a user to build a NASCAR racing team by recruiting drivers, crew and mechanics, attracting sponsorship and building publicity, and directing races.
[edit] Forums and other features
The site offers extensive user forums for each of the major sports, along with more general discussions and a section called "The Pit" for trash talk and more mature themes. An odd feature is the "Death Pool" in the general discussion area. Participants draft celebrities and score points based on their age at the time of death. The younger the celebrities are at the time of death, the more points the pool participants score.
The site also offers "WIS Insider" columns on general sports topics, and provides content to other sports outlets, including game and season predictions, fantasy projections, and explorations of various "what if" scenarios.
The latest addition to Whatifsports is its Legends Chat. Two or three times a month, the site hosts well-known coaches or athletes for questions from its users. The questions are prescreened and have to be submitted by the day before. Such prominent coaches as John Chaney, John Robinson, and Dan Reeves have appeared and fielded questions.
[edit] Controversy
Fox's acquisition of the site was controversial with some users. There was also a dispute involving copyright issues about Major League Baseball logos and player names and likenesses. When a lawsuit was filed by CDM Fantasy Sports against the Major League Baseball Players Association and Major League Baseball Advanced Media (MLB's new media unit) over the use of such material, WhatIfSports eliminated MLB logos and player names and images, substituting generic descriptions of the players. This move generated some controversy with users, though the player names were restored after a federal court decision in favor of CDM Fantasy Sports. The logos have not yet been restored due to continuing copyright concerns.
