In a nutshell, what is FantasyPros?
What are the benefits of using your site?
How do you provide these benefits?
Are all of these benefits free? Do I need to register?
Which fantasy sites and experts do you track?
How do the fantasy sites and experts that you monitor benefit from your service?
What makes your accuracy ratings different from others?

In a nutshell, what is FantasyPros?

FantasyPros aggregates and rates expert advice from around the web to make it easy for fantasy sports players to make the best decisions.

What are the benefits of using FantasyPros?

We work hard to make your decisions easy. We do this by providing:

• Accuracy Rankings and Member Reviews of experts so you know whose advice you can trust.
• Consensus Cheatsheets that can be customized to include only the experts you want.
• Search Engine that compares player recommendations from around the web.
• Automated Dashboard, alerts, and other features to make keeping up simple.

How do you provide these benefits?

We developed a couple cool features and tools to make it dead simple to get the advice you need from the pros you trust.

• We Find. FAST™ is our “Fantasy Advice Search Tool” that finds, collects, and organizes helpful advice for questions like, “Who should I start between…?”  Each search request instantly returns a summary of consensus opinions, expert recommendations, relevant player information, and matchup ratings. Essentially, everything you need to make a fast but smart decision!
• We Rate. PAY™ or “Prediction Accuracy Yield” (we know the name sounds way too nerdy) is our way of assessing the relative expertise of fantasy experts. We rank the experts based on the quality of their weekly player rankings. We do this in a unique (we think better) way by analyzing not just whether the expert’s predictions were correct, but also what those predictions paid out in terms of fantasy points.
• We Consolidate. Our Consensus Rankings combine the rankings of a large number of expert sites into one cheatsheet. You can customize which experts to include by selecting the most accurate experts (historically), or by selecting the experts you personally trust.
• We Automate. MyPlaybook is your automated custom dashboard that lets you monitor your players and your favorite experts. No need to search for player advice each week…just check your dashboard to see expert opinions, match-up ratings, news, and even weather conditions for each of your potential lineup decisions.

Are all of these benefits free? Do I need to register with your site?

Yes, currently all of our content and tools are free. We offer basic features and functions for visitors to our site, but we require you to become a registered member of the site to access the full range and depth of our content and tools. The membership requirement helps us keep the quality of user generated content and discussions high, and it helps us customize our offerings to the needs of our members. Our goal is to build a strong community of fantasy sports enthusiasts that fosters fun and helpful connections between its members. If you would like to join, register now.

Which fantasy sites and experts do you track?

In 2009, we tracked the weekly player rankings or projections for over 20 experts and sites. This group represents some of the most popular and respected fantasy football analysts, writers, and companies. We hope to expand this list in 2010, but we favor quality over quantity. Here is the list of experts we tracked in 2009:

Matthew Berry – ESPN
Christopher Harris – ESPN
Eric Karabell – ESPN
Erik Kuselias – ESPN
Brandon Funston – Yahoo
Andy Behrens – Yahoo
Brad Evans – Yahoo
Scott Pianowski – Yahoo
Staff – CBS Sports
Gregg Rosenthal – Rotoworld
Staff – KFFL
Staff – FFToolbox
Staff – SI.com
Sigmund Bloom – FootballGuys
David Dodds – FootballGuys
Paul Greco – FantasyPros911
R.J. White – FanHouse
Pat Fitzmaurice – ProFootballWeekly
Scott Engel – RotoExperts
Staff – FantasyCafe
Staff – WhatIfSports
Staff – FantasyFootball.com

We tracked several other experts and sites but did not include them in our rankings due to inadequate data.

How do the fantasy sites and experts that you monitor benefit from your service?

We objectively promote the content, products, and services of the best fantasy sites and professionals.

• We provide quality referrals. By providing a search engine and directory, we introduce and link to other sites and professionals that offer the specific content that our users are looking for.  We also believe that the ease of using our service will attract casual players that will eventually seek out more in depth fantasy information and analysis. This is good for the industry and it’s great for fantasy professionals that provide rich, insightful, and accurate advice.
• We level the playing field. There are many fantasy experts that want to be heard and respected, but have a difficult time growing their audience and proving that they belong with the big guys. Through our unbiased accuracy assessments, we hope that at least one aspect of measuring up the experts can be done in a completely objective way.
• We facilitate honest feedback. Through our open forums and reviews, we encourage our members to share their opinions about specific fantasy experts, products, and services that they have experience with. These qualitative reviews not only refer other users to the best fantasy offerings, but they also provide valuable customer feedback to the sites and professionals being reviewed.

If you’re a fantasy professional and want to learn more about being a FantasyPros participant, partner, sponsor, or advertiser, please contact us.

What makes your accuracy ratings different from others?

If you’ve seen other accuracy ratings, you may notice that our conclusions can be different. This is because we approach accuracy assessments in a way that we haven’t seen before. More specifically, here are some of the ways we do things differently:

• We rate in-season weekly rankings, not once-per-year draft rankings. We focus on weekly rankings because they provide more data points to analyze (more data means more accurate), and are impacted less by outside variables that are almost impossible to predict (injuries, trades, suspensions, etc.).
• We analyze the expert’s ability to predict outcomes, not spreads in rank. A flaw in other accuracy assessments is that they consider each rank spot to be of equal value. If you predict a guy will be the 5th best RB, and he ends up 10th, you’re given the same score as predicting that a guy will come in 35th when he comes in 40th. The reality is, the latter prediction probably cost you very little since there’s usually not much performance difference between the 35th and 40th RB. Our system, on the other hand, looks at the expert’s prediction for each possible individual player match-up, and scores the expert based on whether he was simply right or wrong on which guy would perform better.
• We calculate the impact (in fantasy points) that these predictions generate. Even though we just look at whether an expert is right or wrong (vs. looking at the spread in rank), we account for the magnitude of the spread in a much better way. Since not all correct predictions are created equal, we award correct predictions with exactly the difference in fantasy points between the two players.  If you correctly predict that DeSean Jackson will beat out Anquan Boldin but he only beats him by 1 fantasy point, your prediction should be worth exactly 1 fantasy point. In other words, the better the expert’s advice, the more credit he/she gets.
• We assess predictions that actually matter to fantasy players. We only score the player predictions that are relevant and sought after. When all the experts agree, their predictions are not scored because we assume this represents advice that hardly anyone is seeking (e.g. Should I start Adrian Peterson or Kevin Faulk?). This approach ensures that experts are judged based upon their advice for decisions that fantasy players actually contemplate.
• We weigh the positional results to get to an overall accuracy rating. In judging who gives the best overall advice, we don’t just add up or average the scores from each position. We believe fantasy players derive different levels of benefit from each of the positions. To set our weights, we first look at the average spread in points for match-ups in each position. This gives us what a good decision is ‘worth’ at each position. We then multiply that by the typical number of decisions a player needs to make at each position, based on # of starting slots by position in a standard league. The resulting numbers give us our weights – it’s probably not a surprise that the order of importance for positions in 2009 was RB-WR-QB-TE. Nailing the RB position was worth a lot more than nailing the TE position.
• We rank all the experts that we track. Some sites avoid publishing the rankings or ratings of the experts that performed poorly relative to others. We totally respect that approach (we should all be in the business of promoting the best instead of disparaging the worst), but we believe it’s important to publish all our rankings because we’re rating the top professionals in our field. The PGA doesn’t just show you a “Top 10” golfers list, and YOUR fantasy league doesn’t show you only the teams that made the playoffs. So, why should we treat fantasy experts any differently? In 2009, we evaluated over 30 fantasy experts. Some of them did not meet our minimum requirements for rankings and/or had missing data. These experts were not included in our final rankings.
• Want more even more detail on our methodology? Learn more.

Have a question that’s not covered in our FAQ’s? Feel free to contact us.