You may remember StarStreet from last year’s launch – it’s the TechStars and SV Angel-backed sports investing game that turns fantasy sports into a stock market system where you build up portfolios of top players as if they were stocks. Today, the company is launching a new, more addictive game that lets you play head-to-head with other players on a daily basis, both for fantasy wins or for real cash. The new game will run alongside its older counterpart, offering a more casual gaming experience for those not interested in the commitment of building a season-long portfolio.
In traditional fantasy sports gaming, setting up a team, adding and removing players, and continually tracking their performance often continues throughout the season, whether it’s for the NFL, NBA, NHL, MLB or another sports market. StarStreet originally wanted to offer a twist on that type of gaming experience, by allowing users to make stock market-like portfolios, where gamers “invest” using real money, instead of playing in fantasy leagues. To date, that effort has only been moderately successful – the company says it has gained 1,000 registered users playing with real money on the site.
But with the launch of the new daily gaming option, users can now play the same type of game for a day, betting on who will earn the most fantasy points by night.
Here’s how it works: you get a fantasy budget of $100,000 to build your portfolio, then enter into a head-to-head contest with another player through a random match. The contests can be anywhere from free to $53 (to win $100). Throughout the game, you watch the live stats update in real time on StarStreet. Then at the end of the night, whoever has the most fantasy points wins the money (or just the glory, if you played for free.)
StarStreet, meanwhile, takes a small commission on each entry. On the older stock market game, it’s 4 percent on the sell side, and on the new daily game, it’s between 6-8 percent.
To kick off the launch, StarStreet is focusing on the NBA, but will move into the other sports verticals in the future.
To be clear, this isn’t sports betting, explains founder Jeremy Levine, as StarStreet is a game of skill, not one that depends on a single outcome or result. So it’s not subject to the same legalities that surround real money gambling outfits. But it is fun.
“It’s a very addicting game,” Levine says. “We saw a lot of of opportunity in this concept of daily fantasy game, and given that we can move pretty quick on that, we said let’s take no more than a month, build the game, and see if people like it,” he says. “In testing, it’s been exciting – we saw people getting really addicted.”
That’s right, the game was built in a month. That’s fast!
The team says they have other plans for StarStreet’s daily game in the future, including a mobile interface (initially mobile web, then native app), social integrations and more. Users will be able to invite Facebook or Twitter friends, instead of being randomly matched, or they can email out invites or get matched to other StarStreet users they’re following on the company’s internal social network. The company also wants to move into hosting larger tournaments between top players further down the road, to extend beyond just the head-to-head matches.
The first of these new features (mobile and social) will arrive in around a month.
To date, StarStreet has raised $250,000 from SV Angel, TechStars, Jarr Capital (Jarrod Yuster),Don McLagan, Andrew Blachman and Ben Littauer, and is in the process of closing another round right now.
To sign up and play the daily game, head over here: starstreet.com/daily.
Source:http://techcrunch.com/2012/02/28/starstreet-launches-a-daily-fantasy-sports-game-that-turns-athletes-into-stocks/
In traditional fantasy sports gaming, setting up a team, adding and removing players, and continually tracking their performance often continues throughout the season, whether it’s for the NFL, NBA, NHL, MLB or another sports market. StarStreet originally wanted to offer a twist on that type of gaming experience, by allowing users to make stock market-like portfolios, where gamers “invest” using real money, instead of playing in fantasy leagues. To date, that effort has only been moderately successful – the company says it has gained 1,000 registered users playing with real money on the site.
But with the launch of the new daily gaming option, users can now play the same type of game for a day, betting on who will earn the most fantasy points by night.
Here’s how it works: you get a fantasy budget of $100,000 to build your portfolio, then enter into a head-to-head contest with another player through a random match. The contests can be anywhere from free to $53 (to win $100). Throughout the game, you watch the live stats update in real time on StarStreet. Then at the end of the night, whoever has the most fantasy points wins the money (or just the glory, if you played for free.)
StarStreet, meanwhile, takes a small commission on each entry. On the older stock market game, it’s 4 percent on the sell side, and on the new daily game, it’s between 6-8 percent.
To kick off the launch, StarStreet is focusing on the NBA, but will move into the other sports verticals in the future.
To be clear, this isn’t sports betting, explains founder Jeremy Levine, as StarStreet is a game of skill, not one that depends on a single outcome or result. So it’s not subject to the same legalities that surround real money gambling outfits. But it is fun.
“It’s a very addicting game,” Levine says. “We saw a lot of of opportunity in this concept of daily fantasy game, and given that we can move pretty quick on that, we said let’s take no more than a month, build the game, and see if people like it,” he says. “In testing, it’s been exciting – we saw people getting really addicted.”
That’s right, the game was built in a month. That’s fast!
The team says they have other plans for StarStreet’s daily game in the future, including a mobile interface (initially mobile web, then native app), social integrations and more. Users will be able to invite Facebook or Twitter friends, instead of being randomly matched, or they can email out invites or get matched to other StarStreet users they’re following on the company’s internal social network. The company also wants to move into hosting larger tournaments between top players further down the road, to extend beyond just the head-to-head matches.
The first of these new features (mobile and social) will arrive in around a month.
To date, StarStreet has raised $250,000 from SV Angel, TechStars, Jarr Capital (Jarrod Yuster),Don McLagan, Andrew Blachman and Ben Littauer, and is in the process of closing another round right now.
To sign up and play the daily game, head over here: starstreet.com/daily.
Source:http://techcrunch.com/2012/02/28/starstreet-launches-a-daily-fantasy-sports-game-that-turns-athletes-into-stocks/
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