Box Office Blog

I do not trade futures on box office returns. I have never taken the time and energy to research the mechanics of the market. All I know is that “Aquaman” from Entourage broke Spiderman’s record. But for anyone who does trade futures on movie box office returns may find this Freakonomics blog interesting.

In other news:

As many traders know greed isn’t always a bad thing, but when you’re a PR machine like MLB this is certainly a black eye. Its not enough that they bribe economists to lie about the benefits of publicly subsidized stadiums, then bribe the politicians to ignore the truth. Now their doing everything they can to suck every ounce of money from us. This time from our fantasy leagues.

For anyone who is intersted this seems to be the deal (and I must admit I do not have the time and energy to research this to speak with 100% confidence). Baseball statistics are within the public domain. If Barry Bonds hits a home run people are allowed to collect that information and process for fantasy purposes. But for some reason, if we want to use his likeness, or the team names and logos we still need their permission. For those interested the Leagues negotiate with the players unions for an agreement to use their images for video games (some leagues restrict this to one supplier). In addition any individual player has the right to refuse to sign the rights to negotiate on their behalf away to the players union. This is why we never got to see Michael Jordan in the old video games (NBA Jam), and why we see no Barry Bonds (this adds to the long list of reasons the players dislike Bonds). Like I said, I’m not 100% sure I’m dead on with the terms of this deal. I am still trying to figure out the difference between allowing a venue to do fantasy sports without anyone’s permission, and produce video games without anyone’s permission. In addition this is all pending an appeal filed by MLB. God forbid they lose out on their chunk of my $15 league fee that is allocated toward the site managment. When you think of all the benefit fantasy sports brings you would think they would subsidize its use, not try to restrict it.

Lieberman's contract is in the low 60's. This could start to get interesting...