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Favourite Player's Injured? Get a Refund (bbc.com) 131

An anonymous reader shares a report: Any sports fan will know, or at least appreciate, the disappointment of going to watch your team only to find that a top player has been left out. But what if you could pay an extra bit of money for your ticket -- say, 5-15% on top of the normal price -- and insure the cost of your ticket against such a situation? If your favourite player does not play, for whatever reason, you get your money back. That's the intriguing premise behind Fansure, a start-up currently based in Belmont, California. When I spoke to the firm's marketing manager, Tara Fan, she explained it in the context of a basketball game: "Some tickets are $300-$400 to go to a game. Typically, you're paying that to see someone like LeBron James, or Kevin Durant, or someone like that." It works like this: You buy the ticket as normal. Then, at least 48 hours before the game, you go to Fansure, and you pay them an added percentage. The amount reflects what Fansure thinks is the likelihood of your selected player appearing or not.

Someone like Durant for instance, rarely misses a game for the Golden State Warriors and so the premium would be relatively low. "It would only be, I would say, 8% of your ticket price," Ms Fan explained. "It's like... $30 to cover a $400 ticket. And so that's where the benefit rolls out." If Durant plays, you've wasted your $30, which Fansure pockets. If he doesn't, you still get to go and enjoy the game, and Fansure will refund you the entire amount of the ticket (but keeps the bit you paid for insurance).

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Favourite Player's Injured? Get a Refund

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  • Gambling (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Bugler412 ( 2610815 ) on Wednesday February 13, 2019 @09:51AM (#58115414)
    So now we're developing a way to gamble using your event tickets? Like we needed another way to gamble?
    • by Anonymous Coward

      What if the event is better than expected? Like if I went to a game and found myself next to Creimette and we shared a coke and some nachos and got on the kiss cam. Should I pay more?

    • by Anonymous Coward

      Name one form of insurance that isn't like gambling.

      • Re:Gambling (Score:5, Insightful)

        by LordKronos ( 470910 ) on Wednesday February 13, 2019 @10:31AM (#58115644)

        Pretty much every form of insurance is not gambling. The idea with gambling is that if things go the way you planned, you come out a winner. But generally with insurance, you don't come away feeling like a winner.

        Car insurance: You get into a car accident, and your car insurance pays for replairs. But generally you are still at a loss. You've lost significant time dealing with it. Repaired cars with any significant damage are often not quite the same. When you go to sell the car you are likely to get less for it (and insurance rarely compensates you, fully or even at all, for diminished value. And there's a good chance you'll end up paying more in insurance in the future

        House insurance: Your house burns down, and it's a gigantic life disruption. Depending on how extensive the damage and other circumstances, you could be spending more than a year living out of a hotel or rental. Your insurance will pay for a lot of your stuff, but realistically there will be so many things not covered and that you don't even remember to claim. Anything of sentimental value is impossible to replace. It's pretty much impossible to be made whole. In lesser cases, like where you just have a water leak, insurers are fearful of mold so you could end up getting dropped and find your house nearly uninsurable except for the most expensive policies. It can even affect you went you go do sell and the buyer finds nobody wants to insure the house.

        Life insurance: If you have a very high value policy, then even with all your expenses incurred it may be possible to come out financially better off...but come on, someone you love has died, which can just destroy your life (especially if kids are invovled...for their entire life they'll never be quite the same). But realistically, in many cases you don't even come out financially positive in the long run when the big money earner is gone from the picture and year after year you chip away at the insurance payout

        Medical insurance: Considering the cost of premiums, the only way for medical insurance to not be a negative value investment is to have a lot of medical bills, which generally means someone is pretty sick.

        Sports player insurance: I still get to go to the game and still get to enjoy it, but maybe get 90% of my cost of the ticket refunded. And note that unlike other insurances, here I was already happy to pay 100% of the value to do that. So this is really like a positive value return when the insurance kicks in (as opposed to all the above examples, where you pretty much always lose out)

        • by Anonymous Coward

          The idea with gambling is that if things go the way you planned, you come out a winner.

          It is just as correct to say that the idea with gambling is that if things go south you come out a loser.

          How about the drop the winner/loser aspect and get down to brass tacks. The idea with gambling is that you are betting on a thing happening or not happening. And insurance absolutely falls into that.

          Note I fully support insurance, but it absolutely has all the markings of gambling.

          • Scale of things (Score:4, Insightful)

            by DrYak ( 748999 ) on Wednesday February 13, 2019 @11:06AM (#58115886) Homepage

            The idea with gambling is that you are betting on a thing happening or not happening. And insurance absolutely falls into that.

            Note I fully support insurance, but it absolutely has all the markings of gambling.

            In theory, the idea behind insurance is socialized cost : spreading the cost of accidents across a wider population.

            (Medical insurance: Instead of having a poor random guy victim of a sudden unplanned medical expense they can't afford and having big health and economic repercussion because of that, everyone pays a bit and if the sudden medical untuck lands on you, you don't have to pay extra).

            Of course, in practice there's an overlap with gambling somewhere in the middle.

            But I have the impression that lots of insurance companies have moved away from the socialized costs and evolved more into gambling, specially trying to maximize *their own* chances of winning.

            • In theory, the idea behind insurance is socialized cost : spreading the cost of accidents across a wider population.

              No, that absolutely is not what insurance is about. I can see why you'd think that, because that is what certain politicians are trying to turn medical insurance into, but actual insurance (everything non-medical, basically) involves paying a known amount, the premium, to an insurer in exchange for them taking on risk in your place. In a competitive market, the premium and the risk will have similar expected costs (cost of event times probability of event) with the difference being the insurer's administrat

              • However, that is strictly an internal detail of the insurance business and not a factor in the definition of insurance. It's still insurance even if we're just talking about a contract between two parties with no risk pool.

                No, it is not an "internal detail". It is fundamental. Without that, insurance at scale does not work. I don't know what you're using as the "definition" of insurance but what matters is what insurance is in practice, not how it is defined in a dictionary or textbook.

                Insurance companies would not be in business if they sold insurance to only one person, or had a high expectation that they would have to pay out all of their clients. Again this is not a "detail" - it is absolutely, completely fundamental to their business model. Yes, we can have insurance contracts between two parties with no risk pool, but without a risk pool the insurance industry would not exist. This is proven by the fact the insurance companies go bankrupt when things happen that were not accounted for in their risk model, thus causing too many payouts of insurance contracts. Without a risk pool, insurance would be ridiculously expensive to the point that almost no one would purchase it.

                Also, in modern insurance there is no such thing as a completely personalized risk assessment. Your risk is partly (sometimes greatly, sometimes almost entirely, depending on the situation) is assessed based on the observed/assessed risk of the group(s) you belong to. For car insurance for example, your age, years of driving experience, sex, make, model and colour of car you drive, and adress have an influence on your premium.

                So indeed, mass insurance in practice is indeed a socialization of costs. If 5000 people buy insurance, but only 50 are likely to require a payout in a given period, as a group they can each pay less. This is a fundamental concept that cannot be dismissed as a "detail".

                • Yes, we can have insurance contracts between two parties with no risk pool, but without a risk pool the insurance industry would not exist.

                  I'm not contesting that, but it's completely irrelevant. For the most part the insurance industry depends on risk pools to control costs. Insurance does not. The context of the comment I was replying to was "In theory, the idea behind insurance...". Not the insurance industry. Critically, without risk pools the insurance industry could not exist as it does now, but it would still be possible to offer insurance at a profit. The cost would be much higher, of course, and it might not be something everyone buys

              • Re:Scale of things (Score:4, Insightful)

                by TXG1112 ( 456055 ) on Wednesday February 13, 2019 @12:51PM (#58116536) Homepage Journal

                "No one buys insurance expecting up front to either subsidize other clients or be subsidized themselves"

                The only reason people don't expect this is because they don't understand how insurance actually works. Apparently, you are one of these people.

                • The only reason people don't expect this is because they don't understand how insurance actually works.

                  No, the ones that don't expect subsidies are exactly the ones that do understand how insurance actually works.

                  If you expect, up front, that you are going to be subsidizing other insurance clients, that means you're over-paying. You should be able to get a better rate from another insurance provider who sets premiums more fairly. So you defect, leaving the first insurer to either raise their rates for their remaining clients to be more in line with their expected costs or else go out of business. (The insure

                  • by bws111 ( 1216812 )

                    You're not making any sense. Suppose you paid $1K over 10 years for homeowners insurance. Your house burns down, and the insurance company pays $200K to rebuild. Where, exactly, do you think the other $190,000 (the subsidy) came from? From everyone else who paid premiums. Their premiums subsidized your loss. A subsidy of $0 is not insurance, it is a savings account. Why do you think many insurance companies have 'mutual' in the name? You are subsidizing someone else's loss, and they are subsidizing yo

              • by Livius ( 318358 )

                No, that absolutely is not what insurance is about.

                The word 'insurance' gets misused quite a bit. A scheme that is universal and compulsory would resemble insurance in a lot of ways but fundamentally not be the same thing.

                Interestingly, people on all sides seem to prefer misusing terminology to having an honest dialogue.

              • No, that absolutely is not what insurance is about. I can see why you'd think that, because that is what certain politicians are trying to turn medical insurance into

                I live on the other side of the Atlantic pond (Yes, I know, evil euro-communist...), this is how most of the countries here around handle public healthcare systems.

                In a competitive market, the premium and the risk will have similar expected costs (cost of event times probability of event) with the difference being the insurer's administrative costs, capital expenses, and profit margin.

                In theory, yes, the market's invisible hand will solve it.
                In practice, that way you end up with a bunch of private/for-profit companies which try to maximize their profits: by taking-in only the lowest-possible risk clients and having them pay an as high as possible premium that the market can support.

                This ends up putting a lot of rejected people

          • by sjames ( 1099 )

            There is a good distinction. If the event happening or not is of no significant consequence but for the money that transacta, it's gambling. If it has significant consequence and the money from the transaction reduces of eliminates the financial consequence, it's insurance.

            More succinct rule of thumb, if you can come out ahead, it's gambling. If you can at best not take a financial loss, it's insurance.

        • by Anonymous Coward

          All you have to do to make it gambling is sell your ticket.

          1. You buy a $400 ticket and $30 insurance.
          2. you sell your ticket for $400
          3. player you bet on not to play doesn't play you get refunded $400
          4. minus the $30 insurance you pocket $370.

          • by Anonymous Coward

            That's insurance fraud and you can go to prison if you're caught.

            Insurance generally only covers your loss for various reasons. One of which is that it would be gambling.

          • by hawguy ( 1600213 )

            All you have to do to make it gambling is sell your ticket.

            1. You buy a $400 ticket and $30 insurance.
            2. you sell your ticket for $400
            3. player you bet on not to play doesn't play you get refunded $400
            4. minus the $30 insurance you pocket $370.

            But, just like with gambling, the house always wins. They priced the product so they'll make a profit, the only way you can earn a profit is through luck or insider knowledge about a player's injury that will sideline him)

            • Like insurance, they analyze the risks and offer insurance at a price that statistically covers it + operations + profit.

              The only concern is if they have deep enough pockets if some major star bows out. This is where backers come in, who, in exchange for profits, put their wealth on the line.

              It's one of the few unlimited liability company types left, where, if the company incurs debt, they can go after the owners.

              With modern corporations, the company goes bankrupt, tough on creditors. People rarely even t

        • Pretty much every form of insurance is not gambling.

          No. Insurance is gambling, pretty much by definition.

          You pay money to enter. There is an event with some unknown probability. If the event happens, you get a payout; if it doesn't, you lose your money.

          That's the definition of gambling.

          The idea with gambling is that if things go the way you planned, you come out a winner. But generally with insurance, you don't come away feeling like a winner.

          Whether you "feel" like a winner or not is not part of the definition of gambling. You're placing money down, and get a payout or not depending on outcome.

          I think that the problem is that you are assuming some moral connotations to "gambling", and you think "but insurance is

          • by Livius ( 318358 )

            That's the definition of gambling.

            Generally insurance is risk management with the statistical expectation of breaking even. Gambling is taking risk where the statistical expectation is a loss.

            • That's the definition of gambling.

              Generally insurance is risk management with the statistical expectation of breaking even. Gambling is taking risk where the statistical expectation is a loss.

              Exactly. Both gambling and insurance consist of making bets on risk.

              The only difference is which bet and what payout.

        • Insurance rarely pays out big claims anymore. They try to âsettleâ(TM) for less, and when you try to sue, you find out they have an arbitration clause. Bad faith has been de-facto legalized in the insurance industry and it is very much a gamble when, if, or how much you will get paid. People feel âoeprotectedâ. That is until they try and file a claim. They pay premiums for years only to be offered half when the time comes, and are told to take it or go to a rigged arbitrator who will
        • by Kjella ( 173770 )

          Well this is not so much insurance as it's a bundled bet. I mean who you are and whether you go to the game has zero impact on who's playing and it doesn't invalidate your ticket, so you could just go to any sports betting company and get odds on your favorite player not playing, then bet 1/odds so your winnings cancel out what you paid for the ticket. Either way you'll pay them a good administration fee & profit margin, so in the not-so-very long run you'll be better putting that money in our own "shit

        • because you're not expecting to "win". Nobody buys insurance with the intention of using it (except scammers). You buy insurance hoping to never need it.

          In fact when insurance companies get to the point when they can be sure people _are_ going to use it they pull out of the market. This happened in Florida where it's impossible in large swaths of the state to get hurricane insurance due to the frequency of claims.

          Oh, there's one more time when you'll buy insurance: when you're forced to. Like car in
      • Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • I bet this is hugely popular!

    • Pretty much this. They would open it to non-ticket holders too, but it's an obvious sucker's bet.
    • No, you're looking at it backwards. The CREATORS needed another way to gamble, so they're developing this market.

    • by caseih ( 160668 )

      Wait, what? Is all insurance gambling? If I buy trip cancellation insurance from American Auto Association, I'm gambling? Or any other form of external, third-party insurance? I don't think so.

      This is not gambling. This is insurance. The only gambling going on is that the company is gambling that most players will not be injured most of the time, so their premiums will cover the occasional payout. If there is an injury, then all the participants in the pool get a pay out. It's not like only one person

      • Wait, what? Is all insurance gambling?

        Yes, all insurance is gambling. Or to be more precise, it's counter-gambling—you're already gambling by involving yourself in an activity with some element of risk, and in buying insurance you're placing an opposing bet in order to cancel out some or all of that risk.

        Say you're a participant in a horse race, for example. There is no qualitative difference between taking out insurance against the possibility of a loss and simply placing a bet for your opponent(s) to win. Either way you get a bit less i

    • It is more like insurance. In some ways insurance is like gambling, except for the fact the reward for "winning" a settlement, is often offset from the damage that has occurred, and it is there as way to protect yourself from falling too far.

      Now having insurance on a sports team ticket seems rather silly, because sure you can get a refund, but also watching your sports team play is still a leisure activity, and you shouldn't be paying so much for a ticket that if you didn't get an optimal experience, that y

    • This is a third-party insurance product, no different than most other insurance products, though I'd say it most closely resembles trip insurance.

      We were on the hook for a few thousand bucks when we booked a major trip recently, so we wanted to make sure that the car breaking down on the way to the point of departure, or one of us getting sick, or me losing my job, or a death in the family, or us having to move across the country for my job, or any number of other things outside our control wouldn't mean th

    • Do you consider the extra/optional fee you pay to avoid airfare cancellation fees to be the same as gambling? It's semantics, but that's basically the same as what's going on here.

    • If we're going to gamble on who can play, how about we have an option where we can PAY EXTRA to ensure that certain players (perhaps on the team we dislike) are guaranteed to NOT be playing that day?

      (the players could skip the sporting event to get ice cream)
  • Awesome! (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Type44Q ( 1233630 ) on Wednesday February 13, 2019 @09:55AM (#58115446)
    After all these years, a solution... to the world's smallest fucking problem.p Thanks for brightening my morning, Msmash! ;)
  • Wow, they've invented insurance.

    • Re: (Score:1, Troll)

      by PPH ( 736903 )

      Wow, they've invented insurance.

      Wow. They invented gambling.

      This will fly under the various state gambling commissions' radar for, oh, about 15 minutes.

      • by BringsApples ( 3418089 ) on Wednesday February 13, 2019 @10:32AM (#58115648)
        Gambling = betting on yourself to win and get extra money
        Insurance = betting on yourself to lose, and not have to pay extra money.
        • by PPH ( 736903 )

          Gambling = betting on yourself to win and get extra money

          Gambling is games of chance. Like the roll of dice. Here, the chance is whether some big-shot shows up or not.

          Insurance = betting on yourself to lose, and not have to pay extra money.

          From TFA:

          you still get to go and enjoy the game

          So, I get my $400 back and still can attend the game. If the game were cancelled, or I turned my ticket back in, I'd call it insurance. Just like flight insurance for a cancellation or missing your plane. I can actually see ways to game this system by buying game tickets, insuring them and then scalping them (sans the coverage). I get a $400 return on $30 and the ticket is still 'good' in

          • I didn't read that part. Yes, you're correct. Thank you!

            So with this in mind, I don't see how this company will be successful. People will certainly go in on tickets together (if your guy isn't there, I'll go, if my guy isn't there, you'll go), thus causing less people to buy tickets.
  • by Lab Rat Jason ( 2495638 ) on Wednesday February 13, 2019 @09:59AM (#58115474)

    the player MOST likely to be injured on the team, regardless of who I actually want to watch play.

    --Don't hate the player, hate the game!

    • by Anonymous Coward
      The problem with that strategy is that the insurance company also knows they are most likely to be injured, and will set the rates accordingly. Unless you plan to injure the player yourself, of course.
    • by Zocalo ( 252965 )
      You need to read up on how insurance works, viz. probability of payouts - e.g., how actuarial tables [wikipedia.org] work for life insurance. If they get their math right then this is no different from any other insurance scheme, the only winner will be the insurer.
      • You need to read up on how insurance works,

        Whoosh! You'll NEVER guess what I do for a living. I wonder what the actuarial tables say about people misunderstanding other people on the internet. Aaaaanyway... thanks for the laugh.

  • Not gambling (Score:5, Informative)

    by registrations_suck ( 1075251 ) on Wednesday February 13, 2019 @10:16AM (#58115566)

    This is not gambling, it's just insurance. As a buyer of this "product", there is no way for me to ever come out "ahead".

    I buy a ticket for $100. Then I buy insurance for another $10. So I'm in for $110.

    Now suppose "my player" is not going to be in the game, so Fansure goes ahead and gives me back the $100 for the ticket, but they keep the $10 premium. So now I've LOST $10.

    For it to be "gambling", there has to be some path to come out AHEAD. They'd have to pay the $100 for the ticket, PLUS the $10 premium, PLUS some amount that puts me ahead.

    Sure, it is a gamble for FANSURE, as all insurance is. Nothing novel there. But there's just no way this can be considered gambling on the part of the consumer.

    • by Ogive17 ( 691899 )
      I disagree to a point. It's insurance with a gambling aspect. You pay $300 to go to an NBA game to see LeBron James play. You pay an extra $30 for this insurance. The $30 is a bet the player will not play which would refund your $300 ticket. By purchasing the insurance, you are betting for a chance to save $270 at that game.

      I think the idea is silly. In every American major professional league except baseball, the star players will play unless there is a significant injury. So basically people are
      • In every American major professional league except baseball, the star players will play unless there is a significant injury. So basically people are betting against the injury report that teams must provide.

        Especially in basketball, the top teams will rest their star players once they've clinched their playoff seeding. Some even do so when they play two games in two days because the science shows that people are more likely to be injured if they are fatigued. In football this only happens in the last two games at best due to the shortened season; each game matters. In soccer, weeknight games often feature a lower quality lineup.

        It happens more often than you think.

      • I disagree to a point. It's insurance with a gambling aspect. You pay $300 to go to an NBA game to see LeBron James play. You pay an extra $30 for this insurance. The $30 is a bet the player will not play which would refund your $300 ticket. By purchasing the insurance, you are betting for a chance to save $270 at that game.

        Spurious logic. How is this different from any other kind of insurance?

        I spend $500 per year on car insurance. By buying the insurance, I'm betting $500 that I will get into a car accident and I will avoid a big expense if I do. I am also betting that I will get pulled over and need to supply proof of insurance lest I get a big fine and other negative consequences.

        An insurance premium is not a bet, in any normal gambling sense. It's silly to describe it as a bet - but if you do, then ALL insurance premium

    • You do come out ahead. Instead of losing the full ticket price you only lose the price of the insurance policy. There is nothing in the definition of gambling that requires a net gain from the point in time the bet is made.
      • You do come out ahead. Instead of losing the full ticket price you only lose the price of the insurance policy. There is nothing in the definition of gambling that requires a net gain from the point in time the bet is made.

        Then buying a candy bar is gambling, since you spend your $1 and you may or may not like the candy bar. Buying candy bars should be prohibited as illegal gambling.

        • Yes it is a gamble, by definition. Whether everything that is, by definition, gambling either should or was ever intended to be prohibited by law I leave up to individual judgement. I would suggest however, that to say so is pretty absurd.
    • This would be true if you didn't still get to watch the game. The amount that puts you ahead is that you still get to watch two professional teams play a sport.
    • you still got to see the game and you did it for $90 bucks off the ticket price.

      If you're really clever (well, not that clever) you by the ticket, scalp it, try to guess which player is going to get injured and use that to try to make a killing on the scalped ticket.

      It's absolutely gambling in that it can and will be used for exactly that purpose. Walks like a duck, quacks like a duck.
    • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • We don't need a new "company" for this. I'm sure some of the sports books in Las Vegas would cover this sort of a bet already. All you need to do is ask...

  • Which gives you a better view of all the action then sitting in the nose bleed section of any arena. Even if you are on the floor, you are going to miss action that occurs at the other end of the court. With TV you don't.

    If your favorite player is injured or you get bored. Switch the channel, and watch something else. ANOTHER GAME MAYBE?
  • msmash space filler posts are getting ridiculous.

    Not news for nerds, doesn't matter except to jock sniffers, send this shit to sports blogs instead of polluting Slashdot.

  • Next to religion, insurance is the biggest scam going, especially health insurance. As one comedian put it:

    Insurance companies are like the mafia. It sure would be a shame if something happened to your family.

    What this guy is doing is essentially the same thing. He wants you to pay more on the off chance the person you went to see (what about the rest of the team?) isn't there. In both instances, whether the person is there or not, they keep this premium and only pay out in exceptionally rare circumstance

  • Please tell me sporting event tickets are not really $400! Is this just for basketball games?

  • If I have $400 for a sports ticket, then my time is likely very valuable. How else did I come up with $400 disposable income for an evening's entertainment? Do I really want to screw around with a third party to insure myself against the risk of an injured star? In the unlikely event that I miss out, I'll just buy another ticket.

    There's probably more of a market at the low cost tickets. A crappy regional team, whose revenue comes mostly from concessions anyway, could sell tickets that were good until th

  • Not everything needs to be insured, the occasional disappointment is good for you it helps you learn how to manage your actions to maximize benefit to yourself. This is just another step in the movement for no one to be responsible for anything that happens to them.

  • Insurance is a profitable business. Which means with extended use, you ALWAYS pay more over the long term than you get back. This also means that there are three types of insurance.

    1) Free insurance, like warranties. These are more like a guarantee of good service. You don't pay, so whatever you get is worth it.

    2) Insurance for emergencies that would break you if you lost, because you need them and could not replace them by the next pay-check. Health, Life, AFLAC, cars, homes, etc. MAYBE even an expen

  • 1. Buy lots of expensive tickets
    2. Buy this "insurance" on the player least likely to miss the game
    3. Make sure said player has an "accident"
    4. Sell tickets second-hand
    5. Profit!

  • An individual is not an approved vendor of the NBA, NFL, NHL, etc. without a license to resale them. This would be considered scalping by the individual and can be pursued. Unless each individual gets a resale license before signing up for the 'insurance' then the Funsurance people are not allowed to purchase the tickets from them.

    Shouldn't this be on another site, though? News for Nerds doesn't exactly scream basketball ticket scams.

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