The Fan Saloon is brought to you by the founders of Gamer Saloon, an innovative site with 400,000 users where you can compete for real cash playing video games, and boasting over 400,000 members. Well, Fan Saloon is definitely game, and their site, which launched in Summer of 2011, is serving up a nice cocktail of Daily Fantasy goodness. Let’s take a closer look!
Game Offerings
Fan Saloon offers Salary Cap contests across the four major sports. They also allow for Private contests to challenge your friends. Checking out the Draft Lobby, you can sort available matches by match style, size, and buy-in amount. Fan Saloon has buy-ins ranging from Free (where you get 1 chance to compete in a $5 freeroll per day), all the way up to $100. In addition to these offerings, Fan Saloon is also alluding to more Live Draft games in the future.
Software and Interface
The web-based site is simple to navigate, and packed full of features. The Lobby is simple, the roster setup and configuration is well laid-out, and tracking your progress is also convenient. The scoreboard is similar in Style to DraftStreet’s, though it doesn’t update as frequently and is lacking the percentage-power and flashing highlights when a player scores. Chat is featured and prominent on the site, and there are player pop-ups to assist you along the way, which contain game logs, player news and more!
There are also some very cool and unique additions to Fan Saloon. You can create a Favorite Players list by hitting the star button on any rosterable players’ profile. You can then sort through your list of favorites by hitting the customized star button during your draft selection process. For MLB, there is also ‘Exclude Injured’ and ‘Probable Pitcher’ buttons, you can toggle on or off during the draft selection process, which is a convenient touch. This is a neat little addition that I’ve yet to see elsewhere. The most unique, and the coolest features on Fan Saloon however, have to be the community aspects.
Community – It is clear that Fan Saloon is looking to grow upon the community they established with their sister video game site. You are able to view a list of the entire userbase (including wins and losses, which I found interesting), and you can see when members joined. Judging by the 2007 dates I spotted, I’m guessing that Fan Saloon’s userbase carried over from their video gaming site. This is nice, because it brings an established (and hopefully fishy) community to the site right out the gates. You can keep in touch with the site by seeing who is online, using the chat box, challenging opponents or using the built-in mail message system on the site. There are also player rankings, and as mentioned earlier, a sortable userbase. Lastly, one of their features is the User Rating System. Fan Saloon describes this as: “one of the most important community tools used for determining other players’ skills, experience, and reputation on the site. Your user rating is strictly determined on your feedback that your opponents give you.”
FanSaloon updated their software and interface in November of 2011, and it looks much improved. The lobby is cleaner and crisper, and navigating the site in a cinch now. There are a still a few minor organizational feature that have become standard in the industry, that FanSaloon hasn’t adopted. For instance, the lobby is sorted by prizes you can win, and not buy-in amount, which is not ideal organization for those focused on bankroll management. Another small detail in MLB is that select 3 OFs for your roster, then it says RF, CF, LF in the Live Scoring, which is a bit odd. However, none of them are detrimental to the overall experience, and all are fixable…so that’s good news.
Roster, Rules and Scoring
Fan Saloon’s roster, rules and scoring are unique, but still relatively standard for the industry. For MLB the negatives for batting are Caught Stealing (-1) and Ks (-1). For pitching, your pitcher is extremely valuable. Wins are 5 points, Losses are -3 points, you get 1 point per Out pitched, and while you lose -1 points for BBs, you are not punished for Hits. This makes for a Pitcher heavy shootout, similar to FanDuel’s setup.
The scoring system is described by Fan Saloon as:
Prices are recalculated for each scoring period based on recent performance, current year performance and previous year performance. Some aspects of each player’s matchup are factored into their price as well. The player’s number of scheduled games for the scoring period is factored in.
However, the end result comes off more similar to FSL’s (Season avg. only) than Daily Joust’s (Season Avg. plus other factors), in that the player prices are very close to their season long averages. On FSL a player averaging 3.5 points per game, will cost 35 points. On Fantasy Saloon, while there may be something added to the formula in some situations (likely recent performance), a players costs are very close to $1,000 for every 1 point per game. For example, Dan Haren is averaging 9.87 PPG in Fan Saloon’s format, and costs $9,873.
I have to say that I had one of the better experiences selecting a roster on Fan Saloon. I felt challenged, but not to the point that I was forced to do hours of research to compete. The caps were loose enough to get some stud players, and to only have to make a couple sacrifices to upgrade to the pitcher I wanted. Overlap issues still exist however, as I spotted numerous ‘must-picks’ during NBA season. The cap wasn’t quite as loose as SnapDraft’s was back in the day where the players prices stayed the same from the beginning of the season to the end, but weighting the pricing structure allowed for some great value picks.
See the Scoring Tab for Scoring Details
Customer Service
Fan Saloon’s Customer Service is pretty stacked, and they’ll get an uptick accordingly in this Fan Saloon Review. They offer a toll free 1-800 number you can call with any issues. The 1-800 number is available from Noon to 6 PM EST weekdays, and if you need help outside of that time frame you can email: customercare@FanSaloon.com. They also provide their Skype username to contact via chat. I have not seen before on a site, but I love the concept. Lastly, they even give their fax number. So yea! Fan Saloon is very accessible to their customers.
Rake
The Rake system on Fan Saloon has some obvious room for improvement. They go with the standard 10%, which is at the end of my limits of acceptability, but then they also charge a $1 minimum rake (per entrant). To make matters worse, some contests go up as high as 16% in rake :/
This will hurt the low-stakes Grinders on Fan Saloon, and we’ll have to factor that into the Fan Saloon Review ratings. Here are the Rake terms from the Saloon’s website:
There is a 10% fee that will be automatically withdrawn from your account every time you play a match with a prize greater than $10.00. Matches with a prize of $10 or less have a flat rate service fee of $1.00. The fee is called a FanSaloon.com service fee. For example, a $25 match would cost you $27.50 to enter (25 × 10% = $2.50). The winner would then receive $50.
Bonuses and Promotions
DETAILS ON EXCLUSIVE BONUS COMING SOON
Cashier
Fan Saloon has all the deposit goodies and offerings for their site, but the withdrawal process needs improving. You can either deposit money using your verified PayPal account, your credit or debit card, money order, and Echeck. They also offer online payments through PayPal. You can deposit money through the “cashier” page. If that’s not enough, you can even make payments over the phone by calling (866) 934-2636, or mail a money order along with a note of your name, address, phone number to them. The min. deposit amount is $10.
For withdrawals, FanSaloon.com can write you a check or deposit money into your PayPal account. There is a $3 Transaction Processing Fee on all PayPal withdrawals and a $10 Transaction Processing Fee on all Check withdrawals. The fixed PayPal fee is interesting, because it is better or worse than existing sites, depending on not only the site you are comparing to, but also the amount you withdrawal. Length of withdrawal can also be an issue based on the current site literature. It takes 10 to 14 business days to process all regular withdrawals. However, you can select an express withdrawal by PayPal, and you will receive your withdrawal on the next business day (Monday-Friday) and if you select an express withdrawal by check the check will be sent by regular mail on the next business day. There is an additional express withdrawal fee of $10 for standard members and $7 for premium members. Because of these fees, the Cashier section of the Fan Saloon Review has been adjusted accordingly.
In closing, Fan Saloon has a great community and much potential. Their ideas still appear to be ahead of their execution, but I can be patient as long as they deliver! The roster selection process was one of the most fun experiences I’ve had in a while, and I think the masses will really appreciate the simplicity of the site layout and the gaming structure, as well as the daily freerolls. Cheers!