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Social Networking - Tuesday, October 25, 2005

8-1 Odds on PicksPal

Just as the end-of-year holidays are crunch time for eCommerce companies, so the World Series is for fantasy sports companies. We checked in to see how the recently launched PicksPal is doing. The San Mateo, CA-based startup was founded by Tom Jessiman. He was CEO of Ziff-Davis' 1Up.com, CEO of Europe's Sports.com, and SVP at Sportsline.com. The fantasy sports site launched in September 2005 and received its initial $2M funding from Canaan Partners.

PicksPal allows users to wager for points on a number of outcomes other than the winner. Bets that look good at this point include:

Chicago's Paul Konerko will win the MVP (5-1 odds)
Michael Jordan or Mike Ditka be spotted on camera (8-1 odds)

In terms of traffic, PicksPal is off to a lackluster start, getting just a few hundred people to its site per day. There seem to be an infinite number of fantasy sports sites on the Net that it has to compete with. But as newscasters are fond of repeating, it's too early to say on this one.

The a:c's line: Will PicksPal result in a 10x return to investors in the next 3 years (8-1 odds)