With the start of football season, fantasy football leagues are springing up all around the Internet. One Web site, however, is taking a different approach and allowing users to create and manage teams of celebrities for what the founders call the Tabloid Fantasy League (TABFL).
"We saw how many people play fantasy sports, and how many people read tabloids," co-founder of TABFL Mandy Dalsing said. "After having fun playing in our own league, the Web site started coming to life."
TABFL.com was launched Aug. 16 after the four founders had been playing a similar game on paper and wanted to expand it worldwide, webmaster and co-founder Breht Burri said.
TABFL includes three ways for users to play. The game most like fantasy football is TabFecta, where users create a team of celebrities and earn points based on their teams' appearance in four specific tabloids. However, if someone on their team appears for a negative reason or shows up on the worst-dressed list, that player loses points. No points are awarded for childbirth, marriage, divorce or death. The player with the most points at the end of a month of play has a chance to win prizes valued between $100 and $200.
Burri said the game might seem confusing at first.
"For people who have not played fantasy games before it might be a little intimidating at first glance," Burri said. "But it's simply a game based on your ability to guess who will appear most in next week's tabloid magazines."
Dalsing said the concept works well because Americans thrive on celebrity gossip.
"When you see celebrities so often onscreen, you become curious about what goes on offscreen, too," Dalsing said. "It's like a never-ending movie with all your favorite stars."
Burri said he thinks people enjoy reading tabloids because they give readers a quick fix compared to more in-depth news sources.
"They have pictures of beautiful people, light news and they take only a few minutes to read or flip through," Burri said.-รก"I think we all like to live vicariously through others."
After a month of solid operation and word-of-mouth advertising, the Web site has more than 250 registered users.
All games on the site are free, however, Dalsing said in the future TABFL will charge a monthly fee, less than $5, for TabFecta and TabFantic (league play).
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