OneSeason, the stock market for sports that lets users invest real money into their favorite athletes, has closed a $3.5 million Series A funding round led by Charles River Ventures. To coincide with the funding, OneSeason has also announced that CRV’s George Zachary will join the company’s Board of Directors. Hot or Not founder James Hong and 49er superstar Ronnie Lott will also be joining the company’s Advisory Board.
The site mimics traditional stock markets, substituting famous athletes in place of large companies (they even have their own ticker symbols; KING, currently the top-trading stock, stands for LeBron James). Users can purchase ‘Synthetic Ownership Interests’ in each player, which rise in value depending on their demand. Since launching in October the site has traded over one million of these SOIs.
The site could be very appealing to sports fanatics looking to convert their fantasy sports skills into real cash, but as we wrote when the site launched, it’s a system that seems ripe for abuse. Because you aren’t actually buying any real asset and there isn’t any official regulation, users could potentially team up with friends to ‘pump and dump’ a stock. To combat this OneSeason has a dedicated team of staffers looking to curb abuse and an automated fraud detection engine, but I’d still be wary of investing large sums of cash in this still-nascent market. That said, if the site can prove the legitimacy of the market it could gain a massive following – predictions are always more fun when there’s some risk involved.
Thanks to Scott Harper for the tip.
What a pain in the azz when 50 state Attorneys General and the Feds each open investigations whether this is Internet gambling. Bye bye $3.5M!
i heard fantasy sports betting isn’t gambling because of some government ruling that involves something to do with the gambling requiring a lot of work/research/skill. cheers to that!
Its not illegal and its not gambling its sharing the wealth that everyone has to create a more stable economy in the interest of sport. Very similar to the stock market this should prove to keep us cubical geniuses busy during the day
Ever hear of TradeSports?
This one will go the same way.
Yes, quite similar to Tradesports. Maybe they have a fantasy loophole or a lobbyist….
I would love to examine the Federal and State regulatory legal opinions behind this operation.
Re: “quite similar to Tradesports”
It’s actually a bit different. Your earnings on Tradesports were based on the outcome of actual games. On this site your earnings are based on supply and demand.
This site looks unbelievable. First time EVER I gave a startup money out of my Paypal account within 30 seconds of looking at the site. Screw Wall Street…this is where the easy money is if you know what you’re talking about. I like their business model, too. Charge a transaction fee for a trade. This is way more fun than looking at my real portfolio.
Where are the European sports? England is betting heaven and football (soccer) lends it self great for such a gambling scheme.
I don’t get it.
How can a sports figure be in “Demand”?
I can see how protrade.com is successful because players can “earn” their price by performance… but how can anyone tell if a stock is accurately priced?
AIRJ and BABE? Can you really trade stock in a player that doesn’t exist in sports anymore?
What’s the point?
To clarify…. What makes Babe Ruth (BABE) $3.40 more than Lebron James?
It’s the excitement factor of thinking you own part of the player.
Sure it’s all hot air, but so is half the real stock market.
And this a lot of fun.
Think of it like a virtual baseball card for the deceased players.
As for your question about Ruth and James; James is actually worth more as he has more outstanding shares. You can’t just look at price. That said, Ruth should be the most valuable based on his historical accomplishments and being the #1 sports legend of all time. I’m a buyer!!!!!
ProTrade did something like this already…
http://www.protrade.com/
It has a place, but don’t expect many people who play traditional fantasy sports to jump to this.
Protrade did not gain traction because it used fake money, not real money.. Not even close to the same thing! Oh, and people have alreday jumped to this site. What don’t you understand about “over a million SOIs traded?”
congrats guys. keep up the good work!
I been a member of the site since 11/08. In the begining the site was great until people started teaming up and pumping up the stock price or reducing it down to pennies so they can buy alot. Great site but needs alot of work.
i’ve been a member since day one, and a member of the largest third-party forum dedicated to the site. i haven’t seen or heard of anyone teaming up. there have been some pretty vast market fluctuations, but that’s what actually makes it interesting to me
lol, SOI ponzi scheme. Bernie Madoff would be proud.
Does a player stock go up or down pending the amount of ladies he slays?
How is this not just a huge ponzi scheme?
You get nothing in return for your investment in these players, whether tangible or on paper.
At least with corporate stock exchanges, you’re guaranteed a piece of the company’s equity. Why would people pay money towards a service like this when the players themselves have no affiliation with these markets?
Same reason people place value in the pieces of paper we call money. It’s backed by nothing but public confidence.
so the question becomes: is there any difference in the amount you trust the federal government of the united states versus the e-global sports network?
yes, that is sarcasm. did the funding come from a B. Madoff?
Money is not backed by public confidence!! in the old times it used to be backed by gold reserves. Now, the county’s GDP is what back it up.
This is a big scam…
I’m not sure how they are going to accomplish this as trading in “human assets” of any sort is illegal in the United States. Its why ProTrade uses a gifting model. Maybe they think their SOI will get around this but its a legal and thorny mess potentially. But as for any new venture, best of luck to them.
virtual sports slavery?
would it be any different if these athletes were chained in the streets on bidding platforms? Selling at the athletes trade value. I know if I were one of these pro athletes being traded for money I would protest. Unless I was given royalties.
This is like virtual sports management. Real teams do this, and they negotiate with the players manager.
It just seems kinda controversial, not to say Iam for or against this. If its legit it seems like it would be fun. But I guess thats the whole debate .
ak
Pro football star on the BOD? Definite FAIL!
This is brilliant, I wonder if there’s anything like it for actors?
You guys who are talking about “fail” and “ponzi schemes” I guess haven’t done your homework.
Virtual goods was a $1.5 billion dollar industry last year. Billion. With a B. Venture Capitalist firms are looking at virtual goods as the next BIG business model.
Did you know there was a millionaire made on secondlife.com?
Here are some helpful articles, the first one is TechCrunch
http://www.tech...business-model/
http://oneseaso...please-go-away/
There are thousands of people doing OneSeason right now. As you read this. They are day trading. It’s a virtual goods marketplace. The techcrunch article should help you wrap your mind around it.
You might not understand it, or understand why, but people do it. It’s entertainment.
I’ve been on OneSeason since it launched and have made thousands of dollars buying and selling SOIs. And yes, I have requested and received checks for some of my profits.
Like most of you, I was extremely wary of this, but I investigated everything I could find on the company before I deposited a penny, and I am confident that it is completely legal and legit.
If you want to learn more before putting any money in, the best place to go is OneSeasonNation.com. The forums there are buzzing with people who actively trade every day, and they are all very helpful and knowledgable.
So check it out. Talk to the people on the OneSeasonNation forums. Look into the company. And then if you feel confident, drop $100 into an account and give it a try. That’s what I did and I’ve never regretted it.
For the record, I am not Mike Sroka, nor am I the Mike that posted further down the page. There are, in fact, more than two people on earth named Mike.
For those that think OneSeason is stupid, or a scam, or just don’t get it, that’s fine. You don’t ever have to invest.
But for anyone else who is curious, and maybe wants a chance to have a ton of fun buying and selling their favorite athletes, I encourage you to join us at OneSeasonNation.com and learn more about it from people who are active participants in the site.
Yeah, check it out guys! Just make sure to click on my links with referral information! It works 100%!
This has to be one of the stupidest things I’ve ever seen. There is absolutely no intrinsic correlation with a player’s “price” to anything, as an investor gets no “equity” of any kind in a player’s performance. There is also nothing that says a good performance by the player necessitates a price increase.
At least with real gambling you have a metric by which to gauge success. This is just arbitrary.
Wrong… When I blow money on tickets to a game, what am I left with after? Some memories, it’s all psychological. And so is this. It feeds off the excitement people have for sports. And you can’t put a high enough value on that.
There were special provisions included in the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act that was signed in Nov. 2006, that makes this type of trading perfectly legal.
OneSeason is just the trading platform that is used to exchange these Synthetic Ownership Interests, and has no influence in the market themselves.
Just like you can buy a “virtual sweatshirt” in a virtual market like secondlife.com, or you can buy a level 70 wizard, or whatever in World of Warcraft, these SOIs are the same thing.
But instead of going to Ebay, or another exchange to complete the transaction to purchase one of these “virtual goods”, OneSeason is only striving to be that platform, instead of Ebay.
So I think that CRV putting up $3.5 million to gain a piece of that $2billion industry that is know as “virtual goods” is just a drop in the bucket.
Mike is the owner of the site — Transparency please!
Yea, there couldn’t possibly be more than one Mike out there……..
What about college sports??? if this is working and it does sound a bit sketchy to me but if it is why not also include college sports…. some college allstars could be valued huge in college and then their values could tank when they go pro so why not add that as well?
If you don’t get it, you never will. You’ll pull your hair out arguing with the people that DO get it.
Don’t try.
Just know that there are people out there WAY smarter than you who are trying to get a part of that $1.5 BILLION dollar virtual goods market.
Whether you like it or not. It’s a market. It’s legit.
PROOF!!!
http://www.tech...business-model/
What makes KING more important or in higher demand than BABE?
How do you validate a trade on a person who is dead?
If we are trading virtual goods…. I’ll take $10,000 in shares of Isaac Newton. He has got to blow up soon with that whole Law of Gravity and all.
People have to understand that making money is very different from creating value. Even though Oneseason could be a lucrative place to make money, it definately adds nothing of tangible value. On the other hand, it just creates a market that is based on a zero sum game.
Its also quite misleading to compare this to the stock market. At least in the stock market, you are ultimately investing your money in companies that seek to create value in our economy and for that you get equity and dividends.
What kind of value are these players creating that you are trying to invest in?
it could be argued that these players play for teams that are very lucrative and create jobs in the economy so some people may compare it to the stock market… I don’t actually agree with it but people should be able to understand how when enough people are involved in the trading process it doesn’t matter if there is tangible value or not, the people are placing values on these players and teams which therefore creates the market
no one is arguing that athletes are not accretive to society. but you don’t own athletes. you rent a line in their database.
Wow…. I never would have thought that this business was that lucrative!
Never.
This is the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard. People are running away from speculative assets in the real world as fast as they can. And now these guys want to sell you virtual shares in a sports player that has NO intrinsic value what-so-ever?
Basically, this is eTopps all over again. At the tail of Bubble 1.0, the Topps baseball card people tried to make a virtual series called eTopps. They would sell you a “pristine” card stored in a “secure warehouse” for like $8.00 — i.e. 3-4x the price of a pack of cards at the store. There was a huge bubble wherein some of the cards (Mark Prior e.g.) ran up to $35-$50. Then the whole thing crashed. Almost every card on the market is worth less than paid for in the IPO. Why? Because they print as many as people wanted, and there was no demand after that. Frozen markets, no volatility, is this starting to sound familiar?!
I suspect this kind of virtual goods or fony-stock-market thing will go the same way. Initially, more and more people will find out about it and the market will go up a little as there’s interest. The interest will drive up prices enough to make people think they can make money on it. Then the company starts to “IPO” as much demand as is needed up front, and there’s no one left to buy afterwards.
A fool and his money are soon parted. Good to know there’s still dumb money to tap for investment.
Make room in the deadpool…this has zero chance of being a sustainable business.
What a joke, The “stock” has no underlying asset or value to the “investor.” In second life, people are buying something to have more fun in the world…this is doing what?
Only dunbasses will put money in this thing before it is shut down.
Fred… this is fun to some people… secondlife might sounds stupid to some people but fantasy sports are huge and a lot of people are just entertained by it
There is a stock exchange like this but for Startup Web 2.0 companies and emerging businesses which is launching soon – http://www.gtradenet.com
These SOIs will be used in 3rd party applications that are currently being created by various design groups.
Video games, fantasy sports, simulations, the possibilities are only limited by imagination.
I still have no idea what people see in secondlife, yet they are raking in $1.4 million per month, obviously others do.
People pay $1 just to give someone a picture of a beer mug, or a teddy bear on Facebook. How lame is that?
I’m a sports fan, so at least this interests me.
I feel like if this were legit and it could be sustainable then you could use this type of site for anything. i.e. colleges – this would be difficult but if you could track the success of graduates of each school then there could be a market for that as well but there is still no underlying asset… i have to agree with others thinking this will tank at some point
Madoff get arrested and these guys raise 3.5 million dollars for do the same thing, but atleast they have a theme.
I am going to raise money for an animated character stock market. wa wa wubbzy is going for $3 with a market cap of $50 million and I heard they are getting a new another hour in prime time what a bargain.
I’ve been a user since launch in Oct and will continue to be… this is great news for the site and I think gives it some more legitimacy. All of you who are posting that its a scheme or illegal… do your homework, its not.
Katherine – it’s not illegal but you must understand that there is no inherent value in the “rights” that they are selling. Anyone who buys a player is betting that someone else will later pay more, or he has to accept that he is simply buying the bragging rights to that player.
If One Season wanted to do so, they could underwrite player values by promising to repurchase rights for a par value, say $1.00. But they haven’t done that, have they? And I suspect they won’t because they themselves understand that no par value actually exists for an asset that has no claim to tangible value.
What about protected trademarks (e.g. the names and photos of the players)?
Wow! It appears techcrunch is more for the fearful desk worker than the serial entrepeneur. I have been laughing all the way down the screen at comments of hate and of “crying foul”.. Maybe if people first did their homework about what oneseaon has done with regards to legality, market dynamics, 3rd party applications etc (umm… much like CRV probably did before they dropped $3.5m) they would chill out a bit. I am pretty sure one of the most successful VC groups in the valley would not drop a dime in this company if they did not see a ton of potential for growth and in the very least sustainability.
I feel much more comfortable trusting the opinions of smart people like George Zachary (CRV) and Ronnie Lott over the “Seans, Niels, and Dylans” of this laughable board. Maybe the haters work for competitors.. wouldn’t surprise me.
I have been a member of oneseason since the first week and have loved it. I am sure I will be trading and using these shares in 3rd party applications with my kids one day. The community that has been created around this site is incredible. There are probably fifty 3rd party sites with weekly radio shows, blogs, tools, etc. Simply amazing and fun to be a part of.
“I am sure I will be trading and using these shares in 3rd party applications with my kids one day.”
I highly doubt that
Hi “Mike” – It appears is if you keep checking back flooding this board with thoughtless negative comments. I wanted to ask you why. Do you happen to work for a competitor? What is there for you to gain from spending so much time here making comments? A bit bizarre.. Probably worth looking into..
I am a user at oneseason and can vouch for how much fun it is. I have not made a ton of money but have made some, and have had a lot of fun. It’s a really cool idea. I wouldn’t spend my life savings.. I feel like it’s more entertainment than anything. I spent $40 at the movies last night for God’s sake! At least this has the potenial of giving me something in return and is as entertaining as Brad Pitt playing a man aging backwards..
I see them around for a long time, but I’m not an expert. Good luck.
Shill Alert Level: Red (Extreme Risk of Shilling)
So…p2p betting again. What’s new? is gambling, you are not getting any asset (not even virtual, is b%^&t that they call it a virtual something to represent the money you bet) and you are betting on the virtual value of a real figure, if it goes up you gain and if not you loose, is not related to any real life result, is not the score of a game or if rains tomorrow, is just what all the other gamblers are betting. What is the difference with betting on the result of a roulette that it will be higher than X or lower than Y for example? If you were right and it was higher than X you gain, here if the value goes up you win but is pure luck, no brain.
I have been a member since day 5 of the website’s launch date and I have to admit I spent quite a bit of time watching my stocks, especially when they were over $20/share. I even put an auto reload page add on to my Firefox browser to snag some new IPOs (business is business!). I think the site has what it takes to make it but there is a lot of fine tuning that should be done. In my opinion there should be some kind of dividends paid out when a player does well. Also there should be a cap on the amount of times a player can split. After reading some of these comments, one person was right, if they keep splitting and keep allowing to give our more and more shares, the demand will be gone. Let some people boast to others that they have certain players, this should increase the value more.
Again, this is just my two cents.
Shawn
No – it’s not Madoff, because there’s no pretense to what it is.
The biggest challenge is – is there an intrinsic value to a bit of virtual stock?
Possibly – a baseball card has no intrinsic value other than the fact that someone else wants it.
And why do people want it – for a collection, to show off, to show support for a hero, because they’re insane, etc. – but some people want it.
The same could be true for a virtual player card which is what you are in effect buying.
The biggest problem is of course the potential for regulation, and the negative stories when the first granny loses a grand…
I hope CRV really did their homework on it. This can either be classified as sports gambling or a securities market. If its sports gambling, its illegal…at least for US residents. If this is a “securities” market, which is what it appears the site is arguing it is, then by not being regulated and registered with government regulators they will be able to shut these guys down with very little notice.
Very interesting platform and idea guys…
It just shows there is plenty of capital out there to be invested if the idea is right!!
Check out ours, http://www.gtradenet.com
guest, you don’t think they did their homework before plopping down $3.5M? You think spending 20 seconds typing uninformed nonsense is supposed to be groundbreaking insight? Brilliant. You win at the internet.
Congrats OneSeason. This is great news. Good to see OneSeason growing. For you that think it’s stupid – just don’t do it. For those that are interested, it’s kinda fun.
There are currently 3rd party applications in the works to tie in “performance” to your SOI’s. OneSeason can’t do this themselves because that would make them illegal. They are simply the trading platform.
One more follow up… There are tons of people chatting and nice articles about OneSeason out at:
http://oneseasontrader.com for those that think this sounds intriguing.
I can’t believe I let myself get suckered into spending time at OneSeason.com. Investing in nothing … there’s a novel idea.
I just sold all my shares and requested payment. What a waste of my time and money.
haha.. Not likely.. the market has been up for weeks and you would be ecstatic if you were a real user actually trading right now. Appears to be another competitor trying to ice the momentum and positive press oneseason is receiving.
Anyone who is actually participating in the site knows this.. Looks like it’s back to the drawing board for you..
If you want to REALLY know about OneSeason check out a community of 1200+ OneSeason Traders. Our site contains the first and only 3rd party forums based around OneSeason. Articles, contests, and tools to help you be successful trading at OneSeason.
http://www.oneseasonnation.com
I like their business model, too. Charge a transaction fee for a trade. This is way more fun than looking at my real portfolio. rapidshare file search