On Sports Exchange, 'Trade' Takes on New Meaning

Create a 'Sportfolio' and buy and sell shares in your favorite athletes

By Michael Roston, Newser User

Posted Oct 6, 2008 3:24 PM CDT

(Newser) – Trading baseball cards with your friends is so 20th century. A new website allows sports fans to trade shares in athletes and even teams, effectively wagering real money on the performance of pro and college athletes, reports Reuters. "I see the marketplace being enormous," says an early investor in the website, OneSeason.com, which launched this week.

"There are people making tens of thousands off fantasy gaming and this is really just another form of that," said a sports management professor. And OneSeason's founder isn't worried that the current financial crisis will hinder the site: "The outlook for reasonably priced escapes from normal day to day life appears to be quite strong."

[Images (2)]

[Quotes (1)]

A Lehman Brothers trader sports a New York Giants hat before the team won the 2008 Super Bowl. A new website has established a fantasy sports stock exchange. (AP Photo/Henny Ray Abrams)

An unidentified fan holds up a sign in reaction to the stock market plunge at a Chicago White Sox game. A new website allows sports fans to buy and sell stock in their favorite athletes. (AP Photo/Charles Rex Arbogast)

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Daydreaming in my economics classroom, I mashed together my two favorite things, which were sports and trading. - Michael Sroka, founder of OneSeason.com

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On Sports Exchange, 'Trade' Takes on New Meaning