Are You Ready for Some Football?
Sometimes, the best product ideas are simple. Numerous content businesses have been launched leveraging publicly available information, with improved functionality or analytics.
An example of this is a new site, Sunday Strategy, currently in beta for the kickoff of the 2007 football season.
The team behind Sunday Strategy have compiled a database of point spreads and final results for NFL games for the past seven years. They've built a compelling front-end which allows users to easily compare various teams' performance vs. the spread with multiple variables such as field surface, home or road team, conference or division opponent and more. Users can also select various criteria to identify trends.
Want to know how road teams that were at least a 7 point underdog faired playing on grass last year? Just a few clicks and you can see the results, then drill-down to individual games.
With billions of dollars wagered each year on NFL games in casinos, online and illegally, this market seems ripe for tools that can help users identify trends. It's estimated that between $5-7 billion is bet on the Super Bowl alone.
With that focus on point spreads, it's surprising that this data isn't already at your fingertips. While there are tens of thousands of sites that provide advice on betting, Sunday Strategy seems to provide some unique capabilities, particularly for a free site. It's just another example of how you can meld widely available information with tools and analytics to create compelling products.
Oh, and those road underdogs I mentioned earlier. They were 11-39 last year, but 27-21-2 against the spread.
Comments