Protrades, Jeff Ma, live chat with BP...

[rose4prez]

Some of the high lights of the chat, and things to think about when discussions about improving the game occur...

Adkins42 (Dayton): Can you explain how Protrade works? I'm a little confused by the purchasing of players.

Jeff Ma: PROTRADE is a stock market for sports. You get an initial amount of PROTRADE $ for signing up and can then buy and sell athletes and teams just like you would stocks. The price of the teams/athletes change throughout the season based on their performance.

So you try to buy players that you think are undervalued by the market and sell players you think are overpriced.

Their prices are based on a simple formula based on their stats at the end of the season.

Protrade Rookie (Washington, DC): Hi Jeff - thanks for the chat. So does protrade set the value of players, or does the market? If its based on players actual stats, i can get down with it better than if its based on what other people are guessing a guy's value is.

Jeff Ma: PROTRADE sets the initial values and then during the season the prices move based solely on buy sell pressure. Then at the end of the season prices are set to their fantasy earnings (points) for the season. So basically if you buy and hold throughout the season, you only need to worry about what a player's stats will be at the end of the season.

eric (CA): How does or will ProTrade make money? I haven't seen much in the way of subscription fees or a la carte purchases, and little advertising. Is there going to a fee for premium content or sponsorships or licensing soon? And are you paying licensing fees to the leagues?

Jeff Ma: Interesting questions. We plan to make money primarily through advertising and sponsorships. Our traffic has grown considerably in the last six months so we are beginning now to sign up sponsors. In addition we are licensing our content to media companies both television and online. You can see our work on live win probability on Fox Sports Bay Area and on the Diamondbacks broadcasts and we will be rolling out some more partnerships this season. Yes we do pay licensing fees to the leagues.

ekroll (sf): Can you please explain more about how you match up values from sport to sport? ie., I believe you try to make the best players of relatively equal value across each sport. Makes sense for upper tier and lower tier of players, but what about the middle where the MLB has many more players than the NBA (25-40 man roster vs. 12). thanks.

Jeff Ma: Basically the most important thing to normalize across sport is the appreciation. Since PROTRADE is all about how much you can appreciate your portfolio, we are most concerned about that consistency. However we do try to make the best players in each league equal in price.