This Week's Show
Dre and Brian have a free-for-all show that's mostly about the recently concluded TwitchCon 2015, Daily Fantasy, and speculation about the direction of sports in online media, but it also includes an exciting tease for upcoming boxscoregeeks.com site upgrades.
Hosts
- Andres Alvarez (@nerdnumbers)
- Produced by Brian Foster (@boxscorebrian)
Sources
You can watch us live at twitch.tv/nerdnumbers, we're deciding a new time, we'll keep you posted.
Please subscribe to Channel NerdNumbers on YouTube and like us on iTunes!
Video Show
Odds and Ends
Last week we knocked Kevin Johnson for being a super villain. His record does not get better.
We talk briefly about our alma maters. Brian went to Berkeley, just like Kevin Johnson. I went to CSU. This leads to the discussion of schools overpaying for needless things -- like minor league sports teams. Another example, my former school wants a $500,000 fund via donation to maintain the trees on the Oval. No joke!
Malcolm Gladwell has taken issue with the big endowments that schools get
Lots of college bashing all around, tune in!
Daily Fantasy, OwnThePlay, and esports
We have an official sponsor! If you deposit $1 on owntheplay.com using the keyword GEEK25, they'll give you $25 in money for the site. OwnThePlay is a daily fantasy sports site, which, if you haven't heard about is a heck of a lot of fun for any fantasy sports fan.
We've talked about esports before and our excitement and their future. An essential part of their recent popularity is Twitch.tv -- which we use to broadcast this show -- which is now the fourth largest site in terms of peak internet traffic!
It turns out that Daily Fantasy Sports are also very interested in esports. Could Twitch and DFS help esports succeed where they've failed in past? Brian brings up that some of esports old guard are trepidatious about the recent influx of money.
Amazon acquired Twitch for close to a billion dollars. YouTube was acquired for $1.65 billion back in the day.
I get a chance to compare Twitch's acquisition falling through to James Harden and the Thunder not seeing eye to eye.
We talk investing and tech, so of course Chris Yeh's name comes up. His blog Adventures in Capitalism is a must follow and his book "The Alliance" is a must read.
The documentary on bowling I reference is "A League of Ordinary Gentlemen", a must watch. A point they make is popularity in sports does not guarantee how impactful ad revenue is. A point in the movie is bowling at the time (2006) was more popular than the NHL but could not command the same ad revenue as hockey.
DraftKings has agreed to spend $250 million in ads with Disney. So, the ads aren't likely to go anywhere.
We bring up that successful ideas can fail because the circumstances aren't ideal. The concept of the iPad has been around since the 80s!
My point, it's wise to be bearish on esports future, but it's also possible the set of circumstances for esports are turning.
We briefly talk the NFL and how even greats like Peyton Manning can be depressing as they've completely given up their bodies to the sport.
For those that like when we talk the tech industry on the show, you'll enjoy this segment, tune in!
Metta World Peace is going back to the Lakers. My one preseason prediction: barring a significant trade, the Lakers will be a trainwreck this season.
I'm a big fan of the NBA 2K series, but their 2K16 ratings have some issues including Kobe and the Warriors.
Whoops, we forgot shout outs this week! Oh well. To make matters worse, I'm even going to leave out the survey too!