HitFix made its first foray into Reality Fantasy Leagues with our “American Idol” showdown and we feel pretty great with how that experiment went.
In all, we had roughly 1000 players in our HitFix Open League for “American Idol,” in which the top prize was an 11-inch MacBook Air.
Enthusiastic congratulations to our winner, Amy Weiss.
Our champ writes in, “I’m from Chicago and I’m 23. My friend Danny (who first introduced me to HitFix a couple of years ago and is an absolute uberfan–he finished 6th) set up a league and invited some friends. A few of us probably took it a little too seriously and had some intense instant message discussions on Thursdays while we each debated what to do. Ultimately, every week I would try to synthesize the general sentiments of the Idol blogosphere and trust my own intuition. I was lucky to put myself in a pretty good spot after the top 13 and didn’t make many moves unless I was sure they were necessary. I had a lot of fun playing and it ended up being much more successful than my fantasy baseball team!”
Amy’s bracket had the eliminated contestant properly positioned for seven of 10 single-elimination weeks and nailed both eliminated contestants in the double-elimination week caused by Casey Abrams and The Judges’ Save.
HitFix had a number of Featured Players including past contestants Phil Stacey and Melinda Doolittle, plus several established “Idol” pundits. Not to toot my own horn, but I pretty much dominated the Featured Players category. No, I’m not particularly awesome (I only finished 25th overall) but, I did have Scotty McCreery slotted as my winner from the day the competition opened. That probably helped.
Because Fantasy “American Idol” did so well, HitFix is expanding our fantasy roster with Fantasy “So You Think You Can Dance.” The new season began on Thursday night and Liane Bonin Starr will be providing regular recaps for HitFix. We’re still a couple weeks away from the announcement of the “SYTYCD” Top 20 and the weekly eliminations, but our fantasy league is now open. I plan to do FAR worse in this league.
Sign up today and join the fun!