QFL Nation should at least seriously consider the $279 lifetime membership offered by Fantrax yesterday. It would only take 3.4 years to start saving money on the deal at $79.95/year. Or less than 5 years at the rate we paid last year ($59.95). Given how long we used AllStarStats (must have been 10 years), even though every one of us hated it, this offer seems like a no-brainer.

If you look at it on a per team basis, we’d each pay $18.26 more than we otherwise would have this year, but never have to pay this fee again as a League. But wait, there’s more.

Of course, we should see what Tarek and our other FF insiders have to say about the longevity of Fantrax as a going concern, and also, the offer is only good for another 11 days which is a blink of an eye in glacial QFL time. So there are some obstacles. QSN emailed Fantrax regarding any partial refund guarantees should they cease operations within 5 years of our agreeing to the lifetime membership. I’ll update if I get a response.

The offer from Fantrax.

Due to overwhelming demand from our loyal users, we have elected to bring back this promotion, which EXPIRES ON Sunday June 9, 2013, and is only available to current Fantrax members…•1 LIFETIME MEMBERSHIP – $279

But I want to throw one more thing out there, however, unrealistic it is. What if I told you we could buy Fantrax itself? The whole site… or a site like it? Ever hear of MaximumFantasySports.com? Me either, but they have over 50k members, cater to “advanced” users and are for sale for an undisclosed amount.

From BizQuest.

Maximum Fantasy Sports is an innovative website that provides advanced functionality which allows members to configure private fantasy football leagues (free and pay) and/or join public fantasy football leagues (free and cash prizes). In addition, MFS offers free NFL Confidence Pools, Pick ’em Pools, Survivor Pools, and Super Bowl Squares Pools. The MFS platform makes it easy for players to track and compile statistics in actual NFL games. Members create and own fantasy teams made up of actual NFL players and compete weekly against other MFS league owners with points awarded based on the game performance of the actual NFL players that week. MFS cost-to-build $726,281. MFS has grown to over 52,000 members with very little advertising, a reflection of its appeal to advanced users estimated at 20% of the fantasy football market. MFS has an iPhone application and an Android application is planned for the 2013 season.

Anytime you have the opportunity to buy something for less than it costs to build, you buy it.

Even if we paid exactly what it cost them to build MFS, that would be $60,523 per QFLer. Or $20,174 each if we got every QFL Nation team to buy-in. Then we wouldn’t just have a free host for a lifetime, we’d have an asset that earns QFL Nation cash for a lifetime (and gives us access to the underlying code which we’d probably need to change annually). If sinking $20k-$60k each in a longterm investment was no big deal, buying MFS would be the no-brainer approach.

Maybe we could finance it? Some one mentioned to me that rates are historically cheap.