Media Rights and Market Size

Last week, Larry Granillo found an old article in Sponsor magazine ("the national weekly of TV and radio advertising") that listed the TV and radio deals each MLB team had in place for the upcoming 1961 season. The chart is here, and is pretty cool on its own. Larry did a good job breaking down who spent what where, but I was personally more interested in the "why". Several companies (like American Tobacco) sponsored teams in multiple markets; how did their advertising agency decide to pay $140,000 for a third of the Red Sox' rights, but $200,000 for a third of the Tigers' rights?

How Consistent is Fantasy Football Consistency?

The end of summer means the imminent start of the NFL season. And while players prepare with grueling workouts in 100-degree heat, fans are preparing by spending hours staring at fantasy football preview magazines and webpages and cheat sheets.

The problem facing the fantasy football player is one of prediction: which statistics from the previous season best predict value in the upcoming season. One such measure of performance is a player's consistency -- the variation in the number of points he scores in a given week. Pro Football Reference has previously shown that good teams should prefer more consistent lineups, while weaker teams should prefer less consistent lineups on the theory that their best chance of winning involves a few "lightning in a bottle" weeks.

But how do you determine which players are consistent?