TVLeagues: Fantasy Sports Meets Reality TV

David Hui and fellow MIT Sloan classmate have co-founded a web site that fuses two popular phenomena: fantasy sports leagues and reality TV shows. TVLeagues invites users to create or join fantasy leagues geared around reality television shows. Much like fantasy sports league participants get points when their picks have a good game, TVLeague users gain points by correctly predicting which contestants will be eliminated from reality shows like American Idol and Project Runway.

The act of predicting is penetrating many aspects of web interaction. YouNoodle says they can predict startup success, Hubdub and The Standard allow users to try and predict the news and YouBeQB lets you watch a football game on TV and play along against other players by trying to predict the next play. But these are just a few of the recent entrants in the prediction market. TVleagues and others are tapping into a seemingly innate desire to be able to most accurately predict what is going to happen in given situations. It's a measurement of expertise that can be used for bragging rights in playful (or sometimes serious) competition. Reality television is a great arena to capture this human tendency, with millions of people gathering daily to answer the question: Who will be eliminated next?

I imagine that the TVLeagues model could be applied to any show running on television. Dramatic fictional TV often incites prediction after cliff hanger endings to episodes. TVLeagues, which launched in November of last year, is new and still in development, but I look forward to seeing what it accomplishes this year.