User Experience Vs Revenue in a Socially Networked World

So, once you take out porn and gambling, no Intenet industry is as profoitable as Fantasy Sports.  In fact, you can make a pretty legitimate argument that no industry was helped by the Internet more than Fantasy Sports Leagues.  I mean, people were always going to buy books, and go to garage sales, but were they really going to drop $100 on Fantasy Football?

So now all the major sports players have built established fantasy leagues, and it’s interesting how it’s evolved.  Since people play in multiple leagues with different groups of friends, and different league "commissioners" who set the whole thing up, there’s not really an easy way to establish brand loyalty.  I’m going to choose to play in whatever league my friend Matt sets up, not Yahoo or Sportsline.

But immediately, people can email friends about who i shaving a better experience.  Some sites, like Sportsline, give away everythng for free, including real time scoring.  I will happily recommend Sportsline to my friends.  But over at Yahoo, they want to charge a few bucks for everything.  The user functionality is such that my Sportsline league gets more attention.

How do you balance this as a Product Manager?  Do you chase down more transaction revenue, like Yahoo, or do you give away the store and have more ads and sponsored content areas, like Sportsline.  (I can’t remember what ESPN does.) 

So from a marketing perspective how do you decide?  Is Fantasy Sports a commodity that is simply best for generating eyeballs and sticky customers?  Or is a powerful transactional revenue driver?