FISOs visit to The Sun Dream Team on 28 July 2010
Like last year we all met between 11 – 11.45 at Dot’s local watering hole – The Kings Arms – and again Dot had set up a tab behind the bar and ensured that nobody was without a glass in their hand for the time that we were there. Some of us knew each other from last year but after quick introductions the banter began. A number of the guys in attendance had pocketed some decent cash from last season’s game and the World Cup so there was a bit of reminiscing and some chat about the changes to this years game, potential bargains etc.
At 12.30 we moved down to The Dickens Inn at St Katherine’s Dock which is a picturesque setting if you’ve never been. Sadly the largest boat in the harbour last year – Crime Pays – wasn’t there this year. Maybe crime doesn’t pay after all. With the drinking continuing at a pace usually reserved for Richard Hannon’s two year old filly’s most of us took the chance to get some food in.
As the clock hit half one we left to make our way to The Sun HQ – or more accurately The Times HQ where the meeting was to be held this year. For those that are interested the buildings are a mere 100 yards apart and The Times building is more impressive than The Sun’s premises, which probably won’t come as a surprise.
What did come as a surprise was Dave Watkins’ skin colour when he arrived at reception to meet us. Last year Dave looked like he’d been exposed to some uranium rods on a recent visit to Pyongnang so it came as a shock to see him with a healthy yet reasonably pale complexion this time round. Dot was also somewhat surprised when he got out of the lift and bumped into someone he claimed was celeb humiliator Dennis Pennis – the jury might still be out on that one……..
The meeting started at 14.00 and I’ll briefly list who was in attendance from The Sun –
Dave Watkins – Product Executive
Tony Warner – Consultant
Andy – Customer Marketing
Tom – Brand Planner
Chris Williams - Product Manager (joined Sep 2009)
Rupert – Product Manager (joined April 2010)
George – Product Manager (joined early 2009) & now took over responsibility for prices, player lists from Tony Warner
List of those in attendance from FISO:
me (bennyc), Chris (Admin), Ronny10, Jules, Dot, Edmondson, Mad Dog, Kid Kongo, Zarch, Miles T, Chrismar (with Superiorpinkham taking Admin’s place at the curry house in the evening).
I think it’s important before I detail what happened in the meeting that I clarify that this is a factual account of what turned out to be a long, animated discussion. There were some accusations last year (from those that did not attend) that the meeting was a whitewash. I can say that was definitely not the case either year and for those of you that were demanding tough questioning – Ronny and others did you proud.
Another point to note is that the discussions were not always fluid so if the write-up below appears to show that things went off topic – they did.
Terms and Conditions for the 2010 – 2011 game
Dave Watkins was quick to admit that there had been mistakes last year and this pre-season (partly due to the time constraints of having to run the World Cup game as well) and that a new product management team had been put in place to try and eradicate problems going forward. Dave also said that (not surprisingly) the legal team make changes to the T+C’s and don’t write them in language that makes it easy to understand them. He also admitted that changing T+C’s after the game launched made things difficult and was regrettable.
Dot asked about changes to the Weekend Dreamteam game and said the rules were not clear enough. Dave Watkins said that they would do an article for FISO to fully explain how the game would work – I’m sure Chris will chase them up if this is not forthcoming.
Tony Warner then went on to give a brief explanation of how the game works –
1. Every Dream Team (DT) team that you purchase in either a £10 or £25 package is eligible to take part in the new weekend dream Team (WDT) game.
2. Each week you need to pick an additional defender, midfielder and striker to add to your original 11 players to form a 14 man squad – you can pick your 3 extra players from a full player list (although players from clubs not playing at the weekend and injured/suspended players will not be listed) with no budget restrictions (Dot asked why you couldn’t pick an additional keeper like last years WDT game and Tony said they’d opted for this system mainly because in real life there are often 3 subs used and rarely a GK). All 14 players score for you based on matches played Saturday and Sunday using the DT scoring system.
3. You pick one of your players to be a captain who will score double points.
4. No restriction on player numbers – in theory you could have all 14 players from one club if there were enough listed players available from that club and you had managed to pick your 11 man team within the DreamTeam budget. There is no budget restriction for the 3 extra players brought in.
5. The game will open on Tuesday for the following weekend and close 15 minutes before first kick off on Saturday. The website has been stress tested to ensure it can cope with a huge number of people logging on Friday evening/ Saturday morning to add their extra 3 players. You do need to add the extra players manually each week for each team though – the 3 players you picked in the previous week will not automatically carry forward.
6. The game will run for 30 weeks and carries a £5,000 first prize each week but nothing for second, third etc.
After finishing discussions on WDT it was Zarch who suggested that FISO should proof read terms and conditions before the game starts to ensure that mistakes aren’t made. Dave Watkins said that was a possibility and my view is that as the day went on they became more receptive to consulting FISO on a few different issues going forward.
Ronnie then said that The Sun's Help Desk did not understand their own rules. Dave said this was not acceptable and they would work on it. Zarch said the ambiguity didn’t help anyone and again this point was conceded.
Dave then gave a bit of insight in to the volume calls the helpdesk take (he also told us that his involvement with the DT game started when he began working on the helpdesk during the holidays). In busy times the help desk take 200+ calls a day and as few as 10-15 during quiet times.
Then came the most contentious part of the meeting – the clarification of the mini league rules.
For a mini league to be valid for the end-of-season prizes, there is a check that DreamTeam should do to see if the league had at least 30 different players across the minimum of 10 teams. There are four stages in the season – from 11 Sept (12:15) up to start of TW1, between end of TW1 and start of TW2, between end of TW2 and start of TW3 and then from end of TW3 until the end of the season. There must be 30 different players during all four of those stages i.e. at all times. So you can’t start off with 30 different players and then sub the same players in during the window to make them almost identical. The min 30 different players rule does not apply to the weekly mini-league prizes.
Tony also stressed that Mini-Leagues CANNOT have duplicate/identical teams i.e. all teams need to be 'distinct'. Chris then said that he was a keen reader of the T+C’s and that there was no mention of duplicate teams being prohibited when he read through them last night. This prompted Tony Warner to get his laptop out and start looking at the T+C’S and Dave Watkins read out a copy of them to us but there was no mention of the term 'distinct teams' in the T&Cs so it was accepted that they had missed this terminology out from the T&Cs although they said it was mentioned elsewhere on the website. Dave said that they would get some clarification for FISO and again I would think Chris will chase it if we don’t receive it in the next week.
Tony then explained that the two different people needed to create a valid mini league can be husband and wife (or son and father) using different cards. When it was suggested that the chances were that one person was running all ten teams it was acknowledge that it was very difficult to prove.
Reasons behind rule changes
Tony Warner repeated the phrase “to give better value” a number of times during these discussions.
He argued that the Pick and Stick game will appeal to all and that around 60,000 entrants last year didn’t make transfers at all.
Tony also admitted that he hoped it would encourage those people who normally only paid £5 for one team (and maybe more on transfers) would now be tempted to pay £10 to enter two teams in the main game. Edmondson and Admin felt that their changes this year were positive ones for their game.
He admitted that only 5% of anticipated total registrations had been made so far so it was difficult to gauge how successful P+S would be.
Dave then said the reason for the £500,000 first prize was to get more headlines and encourage more people to enter and go for the huge prize. He suggested that’s what people wanted but didn’t really back that statement up.
Dot and Tony Warner agreed that the prizes should be spread better but it appeared that the DT staff were not in agreement about how the prize structure should be set out preferring to go for the big 1st prize to the detriment of those finishing elsewhere in the top 10.
Tony also said that they were keen to integrate Weekend Dreamteam as a bolt-on game rather than a separate one.
They are expecting more people to buy teams during the season to target a particular week to go for the 5k WDT prize. After the first set of fixtures you can pay £5 for two teams and those teams will give you entry into the WDT game for the remainder of the season.
Tony said that last year in WDT there were less than 5% of the unique players in DT. This year you have to make more effort but everyone has a chance.
Ronny fiercely argued that the logic for changing the game was seriously flawed and I agreed with him. Last year you paid £1 per team or 3 teams for £2 and went for the £10,000 first prize with additional prizes for second and third. There were on average between 14,000 – 20,000 entrants each week. The Sun now think that during the season people will pay £2.50 per team to target a smaller prize against around potentially 750,000 opponents. Ronny wasn’t buying the logic and neither were any of us really.
However there was consensus that scrapping the arbitrary nature of last years game was a good thing and now everyone was playing on a level playing field.
Dave then told us that monthly mini leagues had been scrapped due to their experience in last years game and they said that the system had been abused although when I asked how many people had been disqualified from last years game they admitted that no-one had been.
I can appreciate that some of you might be disappointed at the lack of information on the monthly game but it appears The Sun came to the decision quite easily and hadn’t received much negative feedback about it.
Scoring and Stats
Zarch said that player scores were regularly wrong and were not updated quickly enough even when the helpdesk were notified. Rupert said that changes had been made for this seasons game and that they would be improving the accuracy.
A number of the DT staff attempted to explain where the problems originated from – the main reason being a software issue – but they conceded that things should be done a lot better this year.
Jules said that they should offer a lot more statistics and that they would be amazed at the number of hits his site got even though it couldn’t be found on Google. A number of people suggested that The Sun should employ Jules to do some stats work for them and they seemed initially non committal having intended to put the stats section of DT up on The Sun's website last season but this never happened. However Jules did have subsequent discussions with a couple of their staff and I’m sure he will reveal the nature of those discussions if he wants to.
One gripe from last season was that teams were not listed in order (i.e. highest score to lowest score) when people log in to their accounts. This will be sorted out for the upcoming season.
Interestingly Dave said that the integration of WDT will improve scoring accuracy from the outset this year as correct scoring was vital to confirm winners quickly.
Other Issues
NOTW points were scrapped because of the feedback they had received – people didn’t want them and the editor who had launched the team of the day at that paper had subsequently moved to The Sun and had introduced a team of the week for that newspaper – although this will not count for DT purposes.
Table Topper didn’t really make them much money and therefore they saw no reason to continue it. Dave did say that the guy who won it with 181 pts had made no transfers after TW1.
The delay in issuing cheques to prize winners was raised and Dave said there were lots of checks that needed to be made before the winners could be notified/sent money. Nothing he said really justified the delay of six months that some winners suffered last year. Dave said that it was frustrating that although the had an IPhone app they were still restricted to paying by cheque rather than a more modern method – this seems unlikely to change in the near future though.
Game in General
The game is a service for readers and although it does make money (not as much as we think) it would still run even if it lost money.
Dot and others said it was insulting to expect us to believe that ratings for week night matches were done after the game had finished. The feeling is that ratings are done at half time or at the end of 90 mins if the game goes to extra time. We argued that the ratings don’t correlate if late developments occur in games.
Dave said that he wasn’t sure when ratings were done but that they were always submitted after the games had finished. He believed that ratings were done properly.
That brought the meeting to a close after two hours of discussion.
We then posed for some pictures to commemorate the visit and Edmondson was given a cheque for £12,000 which he will share with Zimmerman (at least Zim hopes he’s getting his 6k.)
Dave then asked whether Zarch wanted to take Bloggie’s cheque for £20,000 – cue riotous laughter from everyone bar Zarch who looked like he was going to spontaneously combust. For those of you that don’t get the joke – Bloggie pipped Zarch and others to the TT mini league prize on the last day of the season.
After that it was off the pub for another few beers courtesy of Dave Watkins credit card – he told me that last year he hadn’t been able to claim back the £150+ bill because he’d forgotten to ask for a VAT receipt 
Some of the other DT guys chatted with us for an hour or so before we headed off to The Empress for a curry.
Like last year the guys in the curry house ensured we were well fed and I’m sure Kid Kongo still has a smile on his face after those butterfly prawns – which I confess were one of the nicest things I’ve ever tasted.
At around 20.00 everyone said their goodbyes and headed for their various stations to catch the train home. I think I can safely say that a good day was enjoyed by all. The discussions with DT were more productive this year and contrary to what some of you may think – they do listen to what we say and they do visit the DT thread on FISO regularly. They were willing to accept that mistakes had been made and things do need to improve going forward - we shall see.
I’d like to put on record my thanks to The Sun for their hospitality and to Dot for picking up the beer tab again. I also hope I’ve covered everything accurately.
Cheers
Benny
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I am pretty sure you have covered everything, although no doubt we won't have pleased everyone, but I certainly feel that we covered the main questions as thoroughly as we could/allowed too and the sun guys seemed very interested on what was 'argued' and took our points on board.
Although the game is still not perfect, I believe we are slowly getting there and dreamteam are certainly striving to produce a game that gives everyone a reasonable chance of winning something and providing a good service to there customers.
1, With WDT I don't recall Tony saying injured players would be removed from the list, just players with no fixtures or suspended. I may be wrong, but a small point anyway, so hey ho!
2. The t's and c's do mention about this 'distinct team' thing within a mini league. The intention of dreamteam was to word it so that the 'structured leagues' couldn't have identical teams, but if one occurred within a works league then this would be ok. They reckon they'd be ok to check leagues and make this call. I think this smacks of incompetence, but again I don't see it as a big issue. They've just caused confusion and hassle for themselves. Basically no duplicates allowed, which is good.
3. The player pool is now determined by George who is a Fantasy League employee and he will also deal with additions. Already this seems much better, and I would expect this to remain the case. They'll always have limited space, but if someone like Coleman becomes a regular, then a good chance he'll be added. In previous season's some right dogs added with obvious ones ignored.
