The rise of Loserball: Winning by losing?

What is your background with fantasy sports?

This is my first effort in fantasy. I’m a documentary filmmaker by trade and with a friend of mine, 20-plus years ago, we just thought fantasy was too serious and complicated. We said, ‘let’s pick a team to lose and whoever loses the most, wins.’ It was fun to root against teams and the banter was even better; we would be speaking in opposites. I said, ‘I think there’s something in fantasy here that we could do.’ So I started tooling around with some algorithms and making it a little bit more in-depth than just winning and losing, introducing in-game stats that would correspond to playing poorly basically. 

Then, Covid-19 came, so only a couple of years ago did I pick it up again. I went to the Fantasy Sports and Gaming Association (FSGA) conference and tried out the idea with some folks.

They had said it was interesting and I actually won the elevator pitch competition they hold every year, mine being in Cleveland. That gave me a little notoriety in the space and validated my idea.

Is there any connection from your experience as a director and producer that you’ve brought into Loserball?

That’s a great question. When you’re trying to get to what’s really needed, short, medium and long-term, it’s the same thing to get a rough cut for a film.  We don’t need to do these graphics now; we just need to get our story in place. So being able to prioritize that way for my career making films was definitely helpful and, in terms of how we’ve done it, how we are currently doing it and how it will be done in the future in regards to Loserball. 

Understood. How does one win at Loserball… what are players aiming for? 

Players look at the handicaps of the teams and pick three teams to play, and then you root for it all to go wrong on the field. We’ve got 16 different categories from incomplete passes on offense and missed field goals, to penalties and sacks on defense. It’s all weighted based on how often it happens during a game throughout the season. For people who really want to “nerd out” on the stats, we offer all kinds of research, team previews and ways of looking at each category. Years of statistical data and research went into creating our handicaps; we think our players appreciate the effort we put into keeping them informed about each team around the league. 

We’re trying to appeal to everyone, certainly for people who play, because psychologically it’s a little kinder, gentler than the frustrations that come from playing normal fantasy football. 

What led to the strategic partnership with Bettor Sports Network?

I met Matt Deutsch at the FSGA conference and Al Williams a little bit later on; but we just started talking and they really loved the idea. We love working with them, and they’re doing a great job of finding ways to engage people and promote Loserball to their audience. We’ve also partnered with Scott Fish of the “Fish Bowl” to create our own “Flounder Bowl” for the NFL season, where users can earn prizes just as they can throughout the entire season on Loserball.  We wanted to find the best ways to promote our brand and get the Loserball name out to fantasy players everywhere, so the partnership with Matt and Al helped us do so in a lot of ways. 

How does the partnership with Fantasy Alarm help Loserball as well?

We’re integrating with Fantasy Alarm on all their platforms, including the website, and helping to promote Loserball across each piece of content. They are helping us improve our social media efforts and we’re really lucky to have them as a partner. Whether it be on the website or even on the radio now, the collaborations we’ve been able to create are about helping grow what the company can be, and what we can offer to fans who grow an interest in learning about this type of fantasy. 

You had mentioned a DFS offering; can users expect that soon on Loserball?

Yes, it will be a multiplayer style, the way DFS is played currently. Users are competing against other people with an entry fee. Players will have the option of doing half-seasons or just a number of weeks, so they will have the ability to create a really robust offering for friends and other participants. 

Everything is scored negatively, and we’ve gone back through years of history to track and analyze data that lead to creating our handicap. The Baltimore Ravens and San Francisco 49ers are terrible handicap teams for Loserball, for example, because their handicaps are constantly positive. With the DFS style we will be offering, players want to continuously have a negative handicap to have the highest chance of winning. Whether that is through safeties given up, interceptions, incompletions or fumbles, the idea will remain that players are rooting against the teams they’ve chosen that week. 

Did any inspiration for Loserball stem from the treatment some players receive from fantasy users throughout the season?

I hadn’t thought about that. I have also heard that players are being – I don’t know if targeted is the right word but – called out for bad fantasy performances; and it’s ridiculous. Loserball is less intense; you’re rooting for a team to fail so whatever happens, happens. If a player does well, we’re still calling them out, but hopefully our users are doing it with a smile. 

It does frustrate me to hear about how players are being treated by fans because of the difficulty that comes with playing the game. There is never a reason to attack these people just because they don’t perform well on a given week. While I don’t think this was my reasoning for creating Loserball, I’m hopeful that giving fans this alternative method of fantasy could help create an “emotional hedge” of sorts from their normal fantasy team. 

We’re also just calling out the ridiculousness of it. It’s a hard game and, even when everything goes right, it’s difficult to be completely happy for players that are involved in typical fantasy leagues. I wouldn’t say protecting players was a motivation for Loserball personally; I think it’s safe to say we just wanted to offer a unique way of having fun when it comes to fantasy football. 

Finally, what is the future for Loserball? What are the next steps you would like to take with the company?

DFS for sure. Next year, we want to expand this concept into other sports such as basketball, baseball, hockey, global soccer and even cricket. My ultimate goal is to get into India, where 200 million fantasy cricket players are. So, once I am able to figure out how cricket is played and learn myself, we can launch a Loserball version of it! Those are sort of our short, medium and long-term goals. Global soccer, for sure, the Premier League, Bundesliga, all these places, it’s figuring out what makes sense and how we can program our offering into those fans’ experiences.

We really want to make sure we can have that type of engagement with fans throughout the game. There’s no shortage, however, of how we can offer Loserball into those international sporting leagues once we figure out the best way.  Ultimately, we want to continue growing our user base, expand into the DFS market and other sports around the world. The larger Loserball can grow and the more it can offer, the more realistic our opportunities for where we can take it become.

Kirk Geller

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