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So what does it cost for FBG subscription now? (1 Viewer)
- Thread starter Judge Smails
- Start date
shuke
Black Ice Skeptic
Judge Smails
Footballguy
I might play the sign up for $10 to get hooked on DFS game but doubt it. $24 or so was worth it. Even KMart pricing at $29.99 might have kept me in. But there is a ceiling price out of pure principal. Skip the $30’s and go right to $40 seems excessive. Chump change for FBGs - I get it. But still. Membership will take a hit. No question.
James Daulton
Footballguy
Wat? Us giving you a chunk of money for three years and then having to do it again was like FBGs borrowing money at a high-interest rate?Joe Bryant said:
Capella
Footballguy
I assume he means costs were going up without any new revenue from that source coming back in.
James Daulton
Footballguy
I get that but in all likelihood FBGs would have gotten only a fraction of that money if people had to renew every year instead of the 3 year deal.
And still nothing like a high interest rate loan.
Arizona Ron
Footballguy
A super deep discount for being paid in advance was something we did not want to continue doing.
One big reason people loved the multi-year subscription was for convenience. It was something they didn't have to worry about renewing each year. Totally get that. Many sites these days do the auto billing thing for credit cards and we've not done that in the past. I understand the draw of it for both sides.
jhib
Footballguy
Definitely. I hate auto-renew, especially when it's the default. The FBG multi-year subscription was all about the price for me.
I would have assumed that the deal on a three year membership was less about getting your money earlier and more about guaranteeing a paying customer for the next three years (and the increased chance of holding on to them even afterwards) rather than risk losing them to another site or falling interest in FF.
The latter is what happened to me, by the way. After signing up for my last three year membership, I ended up dropping my one remaining league the next year. FBG ended up doing better on that deal than they would have without the reduced three year membership.
urbanhack
Fight The Power!
Isn't $16/year also chump change for high profile sales guys probably easily pulling in six figures?
Short Corner
Footballguy
How do you reconcile this with taking a fraction off the affiliate sites, ie the draft.com? I can't imagine the new revenue would offset the exodus given it would take several new members to make up for each lost one.
Judge Smails
Footballguy
Yes - but where are you getting $16/yr?Isn't $16/year also chump change for high profile sales guys probably easily pulling in six figures?
Northern Voice
Footballguy
Now, I understand that almost every site is using this model so it must be proven in terms of return on investment but I don't really get it. Like you say, it's for one time users, so sure maybe this year you do $10 to draft.com as a new user and get your FBG membership for $10.
Now when it comes to this time next year, you are no longer a new user, so the way I see it, you do one of two things.
1 - Either you do the same thing at a different site - $10 as a new user to fanduel and get a free membership to footballbros.com... and the following year you put $10 into draftkings and get a free membership to footballdudes.com - in this case there is no loyalty to any site and you are just encouraging people to use the same model on a competitors site.
2 - Year after year you can just keep creating new email accounts and signing up as a "new member" on draft.com and getting your free membership to footballguys. But in this scenario, FBG is only getting $10 vs. the $25 they would have in the past by just directly selling you a premium membership. I'm sure there are pretty decent kickbacks to FBG for the draft.com deal but really enough to make it worthwhile?
Maybe I'm missing something obvious but the model seems to ask for less money and less loyalty or maybe it's all just a sign of the fantasy football bubble collapsing.
BoltBacker
Footballguy
The $40 is just a single price point for a certain package of content.
If folks are hardcore they are probably better off paying $75 for the RotoPass combo platter to get their FBG subscription along with a ton of other content from plenty of other places.
Most folks are probably served just fine with the $5 app.
I suppose the best value for most people is the "Draft" deal, although it costs twice as much depending on how you look at it.
Personally, I like the move toward a la carte.
If there are free sites out there that have a season contest with a large prize like FBG's does for a full membership(and a playoff contest I believe) you should share it here. I think a lot of folks would play it if it was free.
Warrior
Footballguy
Why would we? With the plethora of articles, rankings, and tools available elsewhere for free, a FBG subscription no longer adds to my chances of winning a league. Literally the only reason I would consider paying for a sub would be to participate in the contests, which are few and far between these days.
Last season was my last subscription. Now that I can find aggregated data on expert rankings, paying $10 here seems ridiculous...much less $40. I think FBG is losing subs and therefore raising prices so that the total revenue doesn't dip as much. That's a very slippery slope and a great way to tank the entire business model.
The glory days are behind us, unfortunately. Just my two cents.
Warrior
Footballguy
He thinks we were willing to pay the full price every season, but the discount was a way to instead receive 3 years of money in year 1, like a loan for FBG.
What he (somehow) doesn't understand is that MANY of us would have never paid the full price, and we only subscribed at all because of the discount.
I suspect that for most of us, FBG expects to get $40/yr from us going forward, rather than 3 years of ~$25. Instead, they'll not only be getting $0 going forward, but will be seeing the last of most of us.
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Gottabesweet
Footballguy
It feels like the articles are all getting posted in spurts. Like nothing the past couple days, then when I log on tomorrow morning there will be a handful. What I miss is the staffers rarely put a comment attached to their ranking in bold, some do. Only Wood, Waldman and Hassley do this often. Bloom does a couple players. Then those same comments feed over to the dynasty rankings.
The contest in the playoffs and regular season are fun. The message board is great. I fear that might end up in the subscription some day.
I miss the WDIS contest.
Northern Voice
Footballguy
I agree in terms of advice but I'm lazy and there are some nice draft tracker apps out there I've paid for for various sports.
TLEF316
Footballguy
I usually justified paying for the subscription to support the FFA (where I have spent a ton of time over the past 15 years, learned a ton and met lots of cool people) But now that the FFA got turned into the kiddie pool, I can't really justify that.
That being said, I still may sign up. I do use the draft dominator and some of the weekly content during the year. But I'd probably rather pay the $40 instead of doing the DRAFT deal and getting bombarded with "OMG you could be the next million dollar DFS winner!!!!!1111" emails for all eternity
That being said, I still may sign up. I do use the draft dominator and some of the weekly content during the year. But I'd probably rather pay the $40 instead of doing the DRAFT deal and getting bombarded with "OMG you could be the next million dollar DFS winner!!!!!1111" emails for all eternity
Not sure what you mean @Gottabesweet It's been a steady flow with more and better articles this year than ever. We call out in the Email Update each day what's new.
HellToupee
Footballguy
HellToupee
Footballguy
More than most of us could possibly read much less use. That said imo you’re at the breaking point and would prefer less content over another increase
GroveDiesel
Footballguy
I think this is the truth. FBG deserves a TON of credit for revolutionizing fantasy football with the concept of VBD. That concept was a real and huge advantage in fantasy sports. But, it was also easily adoptable and virtually every "pro" and website uses a form of it, so that advantage no longer exists.
And after that, the truth is that with information being so widespread and equally accessible, fantasy rankings are a commodity now. They're exactly like the stock market in that an "expert" may be able to beat the market for a year or two, but that's all due to variability, not true skill. Over time, no expert is going to beat the market. The data at FantasyPros has proven it over and over again. The best way to win isn't to trust one guy or one site, it's to gather rankings from as many of then as possible and use the average rankings and hope your guys don't get hurt. Injuries are, by far IMO, the biggest determinant in fantasy W/L record these days and there is zero difference any site will make there.
The one tool that FBG does have that I think is absolutely worth it if you have a league with non-standard scoring is the Draft Dominator. Unique league scoring can make large enough differences in rankings to give you an advantage by creating custom rankings based on your league's scoring. That has largely been the case in the past for me, but there are enough rankings out there now for .5 PPR leagues that even that doesn't have as much value for me.
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TheCommish
Footballguy
This is exactly right. FBG has always had more information than any other site out there. At this point, however, it's too much information to reasonably digest. And we're being expected to pay dearly for that information that we can't possible consume during the season. I honestly think that if people could pick and choose what they wanted - a true a la carte menu - most would only choose a few of the features that this site provides.
I really only use the VBD spreadsheet in the pre-season, and read about 3 or 4 of the in-season articles (in addition to the daily e-mails). Most of my opinions are formed by listening to free podcasts nowadays. I take in A LOT of content in this manner.
My subscription ends after this season, and I'm not sure what I'll be doing. But I'll definitely be shopping. Cuz I really don't want to do my own projections.
ebsteelers
Footballguy
I get you don't want to continue to give such a super deep discount for clients (although i am not sure i'd put that in writing) people can take it the wrong way.
but why not still offer the 3 year deal at not such an extreme discount, maybe 3 years for 99.99 (not including dfs) or 2 for 99.99 (including dfs).
---- edit
I still have 3 years left on my subscription so i have plenty of time to decide what to do.
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culdeus
Footballguy
I'm willing to go no content. It's not like the VBD is some secret formula at this point. Take the available starting X position rank 1-n vs the others and pick from the pool with the biggest dropoff in starter quality, until you've filled X.
If in a league where everyone that is even half decent makes the playoffs it is nice to juice the projections for week 14-16, but that has been a total crapshoot in recent history.
ebsteelers
Footballguy
a lot of sites are getting like this, they think more information is better (not even saying fbg in this case (see it a lot in dfs))... which all it does is give the site more chances to be right which they can use when promoting the site.. (its like the old gambling touts)
also, with twitter how much of this information isn't available for free on twitter? or not ever changing by the time an article is posted.
i will say though 40 a year for fbg is cheap though for a year of content compared to some of these dfs sites that charge 30 to 40 a month.
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Lehigh98
Footballguy
Obviously its not a la cart but I'd be more inclined to pay $20 for half the available info and that's still probably more than I actually use. Maybe cutting cable and paying less for only the channels I want has me spoiled me though. I can't justify $40 for the couple of small stakes leagues we play in, that's the same as the total buy in for both.
(And I've been a subscriber from whenever they started charging every year since Cheatsheets.net)
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Dentist
***Official FBG Dentist***
I think that the $40 is a value for what they put out.
That said, I'm not the same fantasy football player I once was.
I really like the site, but I only read about 1% of the articles and use the 10 second weekly feature.
It's probably me.... and I'm already paying for CBS and their rankings... this may be my last year also.. the 3 year deal was good for me.
That said, I'm not the same fantasy football player I once was.
I really like the site, but I only read about 1% of the articles and use the 10 second weekly feature.
It's probably me.... and I'm already paying for CBS and their rankings... this may be my last year also.. the 3 year deal was good for me.
Dentist
***Official FBG Dentist***
$40 for two leagues? jeez.. i wouldn't bother.Lehigh98 said:Obviously its not a la cart but I'd be more inclined to pay $20 for half the available info and that's still probably more than I actually use. Maybe cutting cable and paying less for only the channels I want has me spoiled me though. I can't justify $40 for the couple of small stakes leagues we play in, that's the same as the total buy in for both.
(And I've been a subscriber from whenever they started charging every year since Cheatsheets.net)
my dental league has swollen up to $600 for the entry...
Grace Under Pressure
Footballguy
Scoresman
Footballguy
St. Louis Bob
Footballguy
This is so sad as I remember when the average FBG was a baller. I guess you guys have been spending all of your money on cargo shorts and craft beer.
msudaisy26
Footballguy
How would this affect your retirement age if you win the league 3 or 4 years in a row?
