For those "intense" fantasy leagues...
I think most of us out there who love fantasy baseball have a fairly casual relationship with it. We study for our drafts, do the requisite research, pay our nominal fee to make things interesting and have some fun with good-natured ribbing with our fellow players from March through September.
But that's not the way that some leagues are, and if the commissioner is a competitor in a high-stakes league, a cottage industry is blossoming to keep things on the up and up. Maybe there was a questionable trade, a transaction question, maybe some accusations of under-the-table dealings.
There are a few fantasy arbitration services out there, and one of them has partnered with The Sporting News, called FantasyBaseballArbitration.com.
From a news release:
A one-time dispute resolution fee is $9.95, while leagues can sign up for unlimited dispute resolution for $74.95. With each case there is a Plaintiff and a Defendant and an independent panel of expert arbitrators who will make a binding judgment based on the “evidence” submitted. All cases are reviewed and judgments rendered exclusively online. If the arbitration panel cannot come to a decision, or feels the need to speak to a “higher authority,” cases can be escalated to a "Supreme Court" consisting of SportingNews.com editors who will render the ultimate verdict.
There are a couple of others as well: SportsJudge.com is run by a law professor and costs $15 per decision. There's also fantasysportsarbitrator.com, RotoRuler.com (also $9.95 per decision) and RotoUmpire.com, which bills itself as the cheapest ($6 per ruling).
Now I've never had the need for such an arbitrator, and I've been lucky enough to participate in leagues as commissioner and owner where there were very few disputes, and all were minor. But as the immortal Doug Llewelyn once said, "Don't take the law into your own hands: You take 'em to court."
Comments
I can’t speak for the other websites, but the Sportsjudge.com service is beyond excellent. You mentioned that it is run by a law professor, but working with him are several lawyers and law students. It is also clear that each of them really knows their stuff about fantasy sports. As a lawyer myself, getting an opinion from Sportsjudge is like getting an actual court opinion. I would rather trust the guys who know and can apply actually legal principles to resolve disputes, rather than guys who wouldn’t know what a court room looks like or have ever read a court opinion. Sportsjudge.com resolved my disputes in a manner that was legally just, not in a manner that one would say is arbitrarily fair. Only a legal training provides this. Like i said, I can’t speak for the other sites, but I’ll trust the lawyers at Sportsjudge with my future business.
I actually agree. I haven’t heard of too many other sites besides SportsJudge but looking at these websites, it looks more like a group of sports fans or sports writers who want to tell you whether or not they think your trade is fair. I’m not involved in any high stakes leagues but if I were, I think I would rather have a lawyer making the call. This makes a lot more sense than a lame Trade Veto by the other owners in the league who are probably biased anyway. Interesting article.
I actually agree with these guys. I had a dispute last year and used the cheapest site I could find. The ruling didn’t provide much reasoning.
Then, one of the guys in my league offered to pay for a second opinion from SportsJudge. Because we already chose another company to rule, we agreed not to use the SportsJudge ruling. However, it was excellent–long, detailed, and according to the lawyer in our league something you would expect a judge to write.
If we ever have another dispute in our league, we will only use Sports Judge.