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Myfantasy Verus Synsport? (1 Viewer)

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ifflchamp

Footballguy
Just saw this on the synsport site!!! Is there anybody out there that has used both softwares? Pro and cons of their software?

I think it is kinda of funny that the little guy is trying to knock the big cat off the mountain, don't you? Didn't they just win best software for 2008?

Big balls on the owners behalf, sounds like sour grapes to me?

Anybody know anything about this?

Myfantasyleague.com commissioners are renown for their enthusiasm for the site, belittling all other online fantasy league managers while not knowing a thing about them. Really, it's similar to arguing with fanboys of Apple and Linux. This page was created to educate MFL'ers about Synsport who don't know any better. Maybe it's a futile waste of time, but we had to try.

26 Reasons why Synsport destroys MyFantasyLeague (and counting)

1. Synsport doesn't subject paying customers to advertising

In a world where free fantasy football leagues managed by mega-corporations are the norm, subscription-based league hosting is becoming increasingly rare. Up to this point, Synsport has always charged a fee for league hosting, also known as a yearly subscription. We find the idea of placing advertising on a league's site after they paid for service wrong and frankly kind of disgusting. We have never and will never put advertising on subscription-based leagues. If we begin to offer free league hosting in the future, then of course some kind of sponsorship will be necessary to cover costs, but that is certainly expected by fantasy sports clients.

Myfantasyleague is also subscription-based for regular season leagues. They once claimed to be advertising-free, but in 2008 they changed their policy to Live scoring pages only. Since then, the advertising has spread to other pages and has included pop-ups, virus delivery, and embarrassing content. One can only expect the advertising to continue to spread until it reaches all pages. This unfathomable treatment of loyal customers is unacceptable and should not be tolerated.

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2. Synsport leagues are far more customizable than MFL leagues

For years, Myfantasyleague.com has claimed to be most customizable online league manager on the market. This is another blatant lie. Sure, you can pick different fonts and colors and put in your own graphic background and logos, and changes the helmets of course. That's it. With Synsport Commissioner, you can redefine the entire Cascading Stylesheet on every single of our 100+ reports as well as a site-wide CSS, so you get all the MFL customization with that feature alone. However, we let you download every single XHTML template that we have which you can completely change and upload back to your site. So with the ability to change all cascading styles and every character of text of a page, there are no limits to the customization possible. MFL can not compete with this; their tinkertoy system is blown away.

Additionally, we have six blank reports designed for commissioner use. This means you can have unique pages that you create that we host for seamless site integration (the same headers and footers are used, and it's hosted on our fast servers). Our system separates data from presentation using smart templates and data on almost all reports can be exported as valid XML files for offline analysis.

Many Commissioners enjoy the standard templates though and aren't that interested in template modification. For these, the ability to upload team helmets, team logos, team banners, and league banners along with basic CSS changes are enough to provide an attractive, unique league.

Addendum 14 Nov 08, based on feedback from Bonscott: Like Synsport, Myfantasyleague allows export of report data as XML. Quite a few of their customers host their own scripts on their own servers, but rely on this XML data from Myfantasyleague. Some leagues use the XML to customize a couple of pages, others practically built their own fantasy site from scratch with MFL only contributing the data. Obviously in these cases, there in no limit of customization. We were referring to web pages generated by MyFantasyLeague servers. It is not within a typical skillset of a fantasy football commissioner to construct and host dynamic web pages. Additionally we got the level of customization directly from Myfantasyleague's Features page. It says nothing about CSS customization, but it's possible MFL has since added this ability without updating their feature page despite a recent web site renovation. Given this additional information, we stand by our assertion that Synsport Commissioner is more customizable due to the templating possibilities and the fact we have an even better XML feed.

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3. Myfantasyleague live scoring is a joke

MFL

Synsport

To really appreciate how superior Synsport live scoring is to MFL, you should watch both in action. However, you can view the post-game version of the scoring pages of each site to understand that Synsport outclasses Myfantasyleague easily. The first thing you notice is that Synsport pages update every 20 seconds, 5 times more often than MFL. Secondly, you can see the individual statistics for every single player updated in real time (every 20 seconds). With MFL, you just get a score for a player, that's it. With Synsport, every time a player's score changes from the last play, it goes bold green or bold red. The same is true for the overall team scores. All players in the red zone are backlit red, while the opposing defenses are shown as bright red. Players with recent touchdowns, field goals and safeties are backlit green. Each player's remaining fantasy minutes are calculated and updated along with the fantasy team's total fantasy minutes remaining. Every single play from every single NFL game is shown in real time. All the NFL games scores are shown simultaneously in real time, including coloring for recent scores and red zone invasions. Detailed NFL game play-by-play can be retrieved simply by clicking on the game. When the games are in full swing, the page is blinking and updating like a Christmas tree every 20 seconds, and it's quite impressive.

One of the most impressive features of Synsport live scoring is the true announcing. Every time a player scores a touchdown, field goal, safety, or a two-point conversion, your computer will announce the event and the player by name! For example, you might hear 'Touchdown! Passing play by Matt Cassel and Wes Welker. Extra Point by Steven Gostkowski is good.' or 'Safety scored by the Minnesota Vikings' or 'Touchdown! Rushed by Brian Westbrook. Two point conversion by Donovan McNabb and L.J. Smith failed.' The announcer sounds very realistic and when several scores are coming in simultaneously, it is very exciting. The Synsport scoring page is a great companion to have on the side while watching NFL games on your television set. We are quite confident that not a single person would honestly pick the MFL scoring page over Synsport's while compared side-by-side.

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4. Myfantasyleague jams 'Deluxe' leagues

MFL

Synsport

MFL defines a 'Deluxe' league as one that lets NFL players be on more than one roster at a time. They charge dearly for this 'feature', $180 per league. We call this a 'player pool'. A league that allows two copies of the same player has two player pools. Synsport supports leagues that need 1, 2, or 4 player pools for no extra cost. MFL would charge a 20-team league $180 while Synsport would charge the same league $114. To be fair, our price is a function of the number of teams (the first 16 teams are the standard price), so leagues larger than 38 teams will be more expensive at Synsport. Both services support 64 teams per league, but only Synsport supports 4 player pools.

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5. Myfantasyleague claims permanent data retention, but this is a lie

On their site, MFL claims that data is retained indefinitely. However, after two years, MFL deletes data that they claim is non-essential, such as forum posts. Part of this 'non-essential' data are all the transactions: signings, cuts, trades, etc. Without this critical information, it is impossible to completely construct a league somewhere else. All you have left are the weekly lineups and scores. So when the 2009 season starts next spring, all this targeted data from the 2007 season will be purged. At that point, MFL customers have a limited ability to historically move their leagues somewhere else. This is why our MFL conversion tool can't do complete conversations on leagues older than 2 years.

In contrast, Synsport never deletes any data, ever. We have a different scheme -- one database per league. The data from every season goes into that database and we don't touch it. Myfantasyleague creates one database per league per season, so every season the league has a new URL and can only access it's limited history by clicking its link on a menu *if* somebody set it up properly. It's completely disintegrated and very messy.

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6. Synsport league history is the original and still the best

We originated the idea of an automatic method to track records for professional players, fantasy franchises, and entire leagues. Our records are divided into Halls of Fame and Shame. They are further divided into regular season, playoffs, and Toilet Bowl Series. Individual franchise records are maintained as well as league wide versions, which cover the entire history of the league. On top of that, up to the top 5 performances per category is maintained, and there are over 240 categories. All you have to do is compare samples between the providers to witness Synsport's domination.

Individual player records MFL

Synsport alltime

Synsport seasonal

Match up records MFL

Synsport (click on "details")

Franchise scoring history MFL

Synsport (per franchise)

All teams, R.S. report

Game matchups MFL

see R.S. report

Regular season - Fame MFL, N/A Synsport alltime

Synsport seasonal

Regular season - Shame MFL, N/A Synsport alltime

Synsport seasonal

Playoffs/TBS - Fame MFL, N/A Synsport alltime

Playoffs/TBS - Shame MFL, N/A Synsport alltime

Individual franchise records MFL, N/A Synsport alltime

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7. Myfantasyleague doesn't have the broken records report

Synsport

Because the Myfantasyleague record reports are so simple, there apparently is no need to indicate when all-time or individual franchise records are broken. Synsport has such an extensive number of records that we found it was necessary to have a separate report just to indicate which records were broken that week. As leagues get older, it becomes harder and harder to break a league record and so it's a big deal when it happens. Our broken record report is both separate and also an optional front page module. There is no MFL equivalent

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8. Myfantasyleague doesn't have a native milestone report

Synsport

Part of the Synsport record collection includes a report about broken milestones. There are 16 milestones that can be defined, such as 'first team to reach 5000 points', including when, and how long it took. This is not available to Myfantasyleague users unless they pay for 3rd party services. Our better version comes at no extra cost

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9. Myfantasyleague doesn't have previous champions / plaque report

Synsport

Part of our league wide records includes a summary of all bowl games for both the playoffs and the Toilet Bowl Series. It also lists the division winners and has a nice plaque commemorating all the previous Superbowl winners. If the plaque seems familiar, it's because some Myfantasyleague users ripped it off from us. MFL doesn't generate a similar report but it does have a link placeholder for Commissioners that want to build their own.

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10. Myfantasyleague doesn't have a Lords of the Ring report

Synsport

One of our popular reports is a display of all players that have been to at least one fantasy Superbowl. It is split into two groups: players with rings and players without. Inside those groupings, the players are sorted by most rings and then most superbowl appearances. MFL has no analog to this.

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11. Myfantasyleague tiebreakers are inferior and without a summary report

Synsport

One of the most misunderstood and underestimated areas of fantasy football are tiebreakers -- the way you determine league rankings and ultimately who goes to the playoffs. Myfantasyleague does what all our competitors do: They have a list of sorting criteria, then sort/subsort according to that criteria. That is absolutely wrong. The NFL doesn't treat tiebreakers in this fashion, and neither do we. The first difference is how 3 or more tied teams are handled. The NFL and Synsport will apply tiebreakers to 3+ tied teams until either one team emerges or until only two teams remain tied. At that point, the tiebreakers are restarted with the two remaining teams. We are unique in that we have 4 separate tiebreaking lists: one to determine the division winner, one to determine the intra-divisional rank of the remaining teams, one to break ties for two tied wildcard teams, and finally one to break ties with 3+ tied wildcard teams. We have a 5th list to determine waiver wire order rankings separately. We have 18 tiebreaking categories, and up to 11 categories can be used per tiebreaking list. Many of these categories are unique to Synsport such as Strength of Victory, Strength of Schedule, Sweeps opponents, and Best division because these are used by the NFL. We can match the NFL Tiebreaking Procedures perfectly, and we are quite sure nobody else can.

One of the most frustrating questions for a Commissioner is trying to explain to an owner why one team is ranked above the other team when their records are equal. We created a visual Tiebreaker summary report. It visually explains quickly how the division leaders and league ranking were determined and which tiebreakers were used in that determination. This report has no analog with any other provider, but it is invaluable. To conclude: straight sorting tiebreakers will always eliminate teams that would have entered the playoffs using the NFL's 4-list method of breaking ties. With as much money on the line for NFL teams to make the playoffs, we are convinced the NFL has devised the proper tiebreaking method and fantasy leagues should use it as well.

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12. Synsport is the only provider with true playoff projections

Synsport

Playoff projections determine which teams are mathematically eliminated and which ones have clinched playoff berths, home field advantage in the playoffs, etc. The number of possibilities are exponential to the number of games remaining in the season. If teams are allowed to tie, a base of 3 is used instead of a base of 2. Four weeks out, the number of possibilities can exceed 2 billion easily. These calculations are impossible to provide for online leagues. Well, impossible for everybody else. Our commissioner client is PC-based and calculates these offline, even though the calculations can take 18 hours. Typically these reports are generated 3 to 5 weeks out, depending on the size of the league. The bigger the league, the shorter the possible projection time. Not only is this a highly desirable report, the output of it is used in the league standings to populate the clinch symbols. It is truly a Synsport exclusive.

Myfantasyleague has nothing like this, although there is a 3rd party add-on that calculates the 'If the playoffs started today' report. We find this humorous because we calculate that information automatically every single week on the league standings. If you allow 6 teams to go to the playoffs, the teams ranked 1 through 6 would go to the playoffs if they started today. The MFL enthusiasts think this is some kind of great extension, but it's nothing. MFL should be providing that as basic information. It's a shame that MFL enthusiasts have such low expectations.

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13. Myfantasyleague playoff brackets are weak

MFL

Synsport

It's probably better just to review examples of each provider's playoff brackets to get a feel for the difference. Synsport provides 13 configurations of playoff brackets. Twelve of those are straight brackets with 2, 4, 8, or 16 teams (or less) ending up with 1,2, or 4 bowl games. Three of those options support a runner-up bracket. The last bracket is an 8-team never-eliminated affair good perfect for toilet bowls as it allows the eight teams to end up with a final ranking. Other options include Losers Advance, staggered start times between playoffs and TBS, and bracket reseeding as seen in the NFL. The bowl game names can be customized. Myfantasy leagues brackets look primitive by comparison.

Addendum 14 Nov 08, based on feedback from Bonscott: We've been informed that the configuration options of the brackets at MyFantasyLeague have increased considerably in recent years, especially in the area of loser's brackets. We were mostly talking about the appearance of the brackets which has not improved. Another main difference is that MFL brackets have to be populated manually and the games scheduled manually. At Synsport, the brackets will be autoseeded per the configuration of the league. All games, including the first round games, are scheduled automatically which is a big time-saver.

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14. Synsport online drafts are superior

Synsport

One of Synsport's dominant features is their online draft. It it equally comfortable to draft at 30 second periods as 24-hour periods. There can be any mixture of online and present drafters. Distinguishing features include verbal announcements of all selected players optionally including position, professional team, and fantasy team. This is the same voice that announces the live scoring, and it can be customized to say the actual team name instead of 'Team 2 selects...'. Teams can program a robot to draft for them which is very reliable and very flexible. We've also got a projector version of the draft perfect for beaming on a wall during a live draft. The user interface is FAST and everyone is able to use it without prior training. Unfortunately, not much can be seen on this report without logging in, and especially not after the season starts. We can show off the projector and the draft summary. We haven't seen the MFL draft interface first hand, but we are going to assume it is the same quality as the rest of the MFL site.

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15. Synsport leagues go all year around

Synsport doesn't have an 'new leagues open in a month' setup like everyone else. Our leagues are broken up into 6 stages: baseline, predraft, draft, preseason, regular season, and offseason (the playoffs are lumped with the regular season). The offseason can extend all the way to August of the next year. We typically prepare our site for the upcoming season right after the superbowl in February. The Commissioner has the choice when he wants to move between the offseason and the preseason of the following year. Other than the time it takes to baseline the league, the transition between the two stages is seamless for the owner. This is perfect for dynastic leagues that never stop. We update player databases all year around, especially after the NFL draft. Myfantasyleague isn't bad is this regard but Synsport is better.

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16. Myfantasyleague scoring is very good, but Synsport is better

One of Myfantasyleague's strong points is their scoring system. It has lots of rules, supports conditional scoring, and general is very flexible. We have the ability to import MFL leagues into the Synsport system and all the rules can be converted. However Myfantasyleague can't say the same. We've got even more rules, and we can apply different scoring on the same category to different positions. For most leagues, both Synsport and MFL can easily handle their scoring. We'll take slight edge on complete capability though.

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17. Synsport allows multiple-team trades

The commissioner decides what assets can be traded, such as draft picks, future draft picks, rostered players, rights to players, waiver allocations, and cash. Most providers limit trades between two teams. Synsport has always allowed for trades to be targeted at any number of teams. All the parties have to agree of course, but it sure beats a two-part trade when the third party backs out after the first trade has gone through. We've got all the standard options too: Commissioner veto and negative league vetoes. The latter is when the league has a certain amount of time to review the trade and it will be automatically approved at the end of the time unless enough teams veto the trade proposal to kill it. It appears that MFL allows trades of at least picks, rostered players, and future picks, but we aren't sure they support multi-team trades yet.

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18. Synsport has superior kitty accounting

We have this feature called 'Autokitty'. What that means is, whenever some event occurs like a trade, a player signing, the high score of the week, winning the division, etc., that results in a change in the team's real cash funds, an entry is added to their ledger. Properly set up, the league finances runs itself. Synsport uses a double-entry accounting method so all the numbers always balance. The accounts cover the team from it's inception. Other providers have a per-season accounting system which has to be balanced at the end of each year. Since we support dynastic leagues, and since lots of teams want to roll over their winnings to pay for next year's entry fee, we continuously track accounts. Financial reports are hidden to everybody except league members so people don't get in trouble for 'gambling' at work. Some entries are generated in real time, other entries that are the result of the fantasy games are generated on Tuesday night. Team balances can be shown on the front page (if logged in) and the full report shows all accounting details on a per-season basis. We are also integrated with Paypal so teams can pay their debts quickly and painlessly. Myfantasyleague isn't horrible, but doesn't have a running balance, Paypal integration, or utilize double-entry methods. The report is also uglier, but that's always the case.

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19. Synsport calculates Strength of Victory

Synsport

This report was created because it was required to support true NFL tiebreakers. However, it's a great report! It's a much better tiebreaker than total points -- just because two teams have the same number of wins doesn't mean they're equal. Who did each team beat? This characteristic measures the relative value of each victory. Myfantasyleague has nothing like it.

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20. Synsport calculates Strength of Schedule

Synsport

This report was created because it was required to support true NFL tiebreakers. Some leagues don't have a use for the strength of schedule because they have redraft leagues, meaning last year's schedule is meaningless. This report is much more useful for dynastic leagues though. Like the NFL, it's calculated in the preseason to determine who has the toughest schedule ahead of them. Myfantasyleague has nothing like it.

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21. Synsport calculates Strength of Future Schedule

Synsport

Fantasy commissioners realized quickly that a much more useful report is to consider the current records when looking at future opponents. Thus the Strength of Future schedule was born, and unlike the Schedule Of Schedule, it changes every week based on the new records and power rankings. This report is good and accurate for all leagues. Myfantasyleague has nothing like it.

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22. Synsport has a community too

One of the supposed reasons that MFL clients hate to leave is because of the MFL community. While Synsport has far fewer users, our community is solid too. Many members continue to visit daily after 5 years, and our forums are active all year round. Perhaps this is one point where we don't dominate Myfantasyleague, but we've got a nice group of users with solid citizens that are very civil. And unlike MFL, we've never banished or censored anyone. Any criticism Synsport has received in the past is still visible today. We would edit/delete something profane or vulgar if it appeared, but nothing like that has appeared after 6+ years. We also monitor our forums multiple times a day and are extremely responsive.

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23. People that are familiar with both Synsport and MFL prefer Synsport

Honestly, anyone that is familiar with how Synsport is today (not 3 years ago) and how Myfantasyleague is today will not say they are comparable. Here is an unsolicited statement that we heard just today:

If anyone actually looked at Synsport, and actually installed it and used it, they would see that it blows away anything out there. There is no comparison between Synsport and MFL. I am an owner in 2 leagues [at Myfantasyleague.com] and it is painful for me to navigate through that site and honestly the reports aren't that good.

That's a typical statement. We understand the situation where a league has used MFL for years, is comfortable with it, understands it and already customized it and inertia is keeping them in place. What we don't understand is why people mindlessly cling to the belief that Myfantasyleague is the best and no other provider can come close. It's wrong (fact, not opinion), and it's ignorant. Do some real research and don't assume that just because a site has less users that they are inferior. That's not the case here. We'll put up ANY report or functionality that we possess against Myfantasyleague's version. We're confident that our version would be superior. Obviously we have a lot of functionality that doesn't exist in MFL, will probably never exist, and the so-called third-party add-ons will not be able to compete. Why would people pay extra for what we provide as basic functionality and better as well?

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24. Synsport profiles franchise coaches/owners/general managers

Synsport

Every fantasy franchise has a number of specific reports. The top report lists the team's updated fantasy schedule, its current roster, and a 'At A Glance' section. This Glance includes the team's regular season, postseason, and total career records for its entire history. In addition to a place for the Commissioner to write a team summary, there is a profile for the team's current coach (or owner/gm). This profile includes an 80x60 photo, his name, a list of how many years experience he has, and his personal win-loss-tie record. As an honorable mention, this report also includes a Display case which indicates all the achievements of the team over its entire history, and what helmet the team used during each year. This functionality is not available to MFL users with their native reports.

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25. Synsport site is not blocked by corporations

Many companies have corporate firewills that block all URLs with the word 'fantasy' in it. Or perhaps MFL is so well established that the IT guy writes a special rule for myfantasyleague.com. In either case, some people have discovered that the MFL site is inaccessible from the work computer. The Synsport site is accessible from these very same computers.

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26. Synsport supports true league domains

A growing trend is for a league to buy their own domain name. If a myfantasyleague commissioner does this, they either have to frame MFL's site in their own site, they build an entire site from scratch and use the XML feed to populate it, or they simple us a 'redirect' which eventually changes the URL back to myfantasyleague.com.

As a service to its commissioners, Synsport will update the DNS servers at their datacenter with the top level domain or just the subdomain of their client's domain name. So when a just types in a URL, it is not redirected. The global DNS network recognizes that the client's url is linked to our servers. A redirect is not the same. As far as we know, we are the only provider to handle client's domain names, and this is a really nice touch. Even if synsport is ever blacklisted, one could simply get a $10 domain name, link it to their site, and *boom*, there it is. This is especially nice for people that use their domain for other things, so Synsport would be just one subdomain of their site.

 
Two total post by pro-Synsport, the other is a $100 league he host on MFL. Hmmmm...

 
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