The Commodification of Pro Athletes Continues

READ MORE: Fantasy Sports, Futures Markets, ProTrade

Monday’s launch of ProTrade shows just how more and more the fantasy sports industry is starting to resemble legitimate market predictors—and how you can better marry your Wall Street knowledge and your sports obsessiveness. Set up like other futures markets like Intrade and Tradesports, Pro Trade enables the investor to buy and sell athletes based on their performances on their own virtual stock market. Right now, its only NFL Players and no real money is exchanged—for now. But there are cash prizes awarded to members for winning various incentive based competitions on the site. The system was started by Mike Kerns and Jeffery Ma with Michael Lewis’ “MoneyBall” as an inspiration. It’s a data-heads dream and is not reccommended for the casual fantasy sports nerd—this is more geared toward the Football Outsiders crew then let’s say the Yahoo Fantasy Sports’ enthusiast. Right now, however, the site is for some reason not running. Tease.

Online Sports Market Turns Atheletes Into Stocks [MSNBC]
ProTrade Home [ProTrade]