🪑These Are the Worst Seats In Sports

I currently manage two fantasy football teams (sick flex, I know) but one of them is in an 8-man league.

Is it ideal? No, but most fantasy leagues are just 10-man leagues anyway… right?

Actually, the median number of people in a fantasy league is 12, which means a large portion of people are in a league with more than 12 members.

And to those people, I say: who the hell is your FLEX?

But do you know the median buy-in for a league? The answer is at the end….

🗞 The Big Story: Illegal Streaming is… Legal?

📉 Biggest Loser: The Worst Seat in the House

🏆 Winner’s Circle: Predicting the NFL Season with One Stat

⬇️ Listen: One man with a pinball machine in a New York City Courtroom saved fantasy football, listen to find out how:

🗞 The Big Story

The NFL, NBA, and UFC just sent a joint letter to the U.S. government asking for an update to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA).

What is the DMCA: A 1998 law under the Clinton administration that was created to move copyright law “into the digital age.”

• This letter claims that sports leagues aren’t able to take quick enough action on pirated streams

• Costing them a reported $28 billion every year in lost revenue

Is It True: In 2018 it was reported that more people illegally streamed the first Fury vs. Wilder fight than bought it through pay-per-view, costing the organizers of the event $140M.

And even as platforms like Reddit have attempted to crack down on communities like r/nflsreams it’s still pretty hard to catch these websites under current laws.

The Blueprint: Websites like Buffstreams aren’t actually the ones hosting the copyrighted content. They’re just landing pages with links to other websites that re-stream and embed the live events we watch.

This means the websites with all of the traffic and name recognition get to skirt any liability and stay up, while the websites you’ve never heard of are the ones that get taken down.

My Verdict: Let’s be careful just how much power we give these sports leagues. Right now they’re asking for the power to instantly remove illegal streams, but doesn’t that feel like a step too far?

📉 Biggest Loser

This is the worst seat in all of sports, but how much does it actually cost, and who the hell put it here?

The Backstory: @CFBcampustours on Twitter posted his view from Section 303, Row 14, Seat 10 at the Los Angeles Memorial Collesium in which you can only see about 2% of the field.

Who Designed This: These seats fell victim to a 2018 renovation that saw the removal of 15,000 seats in place of an expanded press box. The project cost $315 million and was the first major renovation of the 100-year-old stadium in 20 years.

Who’s Sitting Here: If it’s a USC game, the answer is nobody. But you actually can’t buy tickets in these obstructed sections anyway. Comparable seats on that level go for less than $100, but you’d have to pay me to sit here.

Sponsored by Sleeper

💰 Pick of the Week

Christian McCaffery has never not gotten at least 1 rushing yard in games he’s fully healthy, so this is basically a lock. But Sleeper also has picks on every NFL game this weekend, some of my favorites are:

• Justin Fields more than 0.5 passing touchdowns

• Alexander Mattison more than 55.5 rushing yards

• Aaron Rodgers more than 1.5 passing touchdowns

And right now on Sleeper, those three picks plus the free McCaffery pick pays out $43.30 on a $5 entry. That’s 8.6x you’re money!

Use my code TYLERWEBB for a deposit match up to $100 on your first deposit!

🏆 Winner’s Circle

I can predict the entire 2023 NFL season with just one stat.

The Hypothesis: Good teams never seem to spend a lot of money in free agency, so is there a correlation between free agent spending and wins?

On The Surface: A report out of Cal Berkley seems to indicate ‘yes.’ Since 2012, there has been a strong, negative correlation between the amount of money spent on free agency and wins (see below).

Let’s Test It: I used Spotrac to rank order teams based on how much money they spent on free agents last offseason and I created my NFL division and playoff predictions based purely on who spent the most/least.

Notes: The AFC looks way better than the NFC, but it’s clear that a few teams in the right column are completely tanking. Regardless, I’ll be curious to see where this ends up.

⏱ In Other News

• People are mad at all of the commercials during college football.

• The Moutain West might become the new Pac-12.

• 28% of all US adults plan to bet on the NFL this year, that’s up 57.7% from last year.

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👋 As for the median fantasy football buy-in, I was impressed to learn it’s $50. The median losses for me on fantasy football every year? 100%

Happy Friday!