A fantasy sports dream - Jets & Giants stadium scoreboard to show player stats - Ingles

The NFL scoreboard at the New Meadowlands is about to get just a little more crowded.

No, the Giants and Jets aren't selling more naming rights. But like the rest of the NFL, they are going to show more than mere scores during games this season.

In a move that allows the league to cater to fantasy football fanatics, NFL teams will show individual player statistics on stadium scoreboards. Fans at Thursday night's Packers-Saints game will be the first to experience the new setup.

According to NFL spokesperson Brian McCarthy, the move is not mandated by the NFL, as was originally reported, but the league has "strongly urged" teams to take advantage of the service, which will originate from the league office. According to McCarthy, nearly every NFL team is utilizing the service.

"We're doing our best to add value to the in-stadium experience," McCarthy told the Daily News. "In some ways, we're competing with ourselves."

Through television services such as the NFL Red Zone package, which allows viewers to watch key highlights from every game during commercial breaks, the league has created a well-rounded TV experience for NFL fans, McCarthy said. In part because of its sometimes-bloated price, the live experience has struggled to compete with that home experience. The league's regular-season paid attendance totals fell for the third straight season in 2010.

It's unlikely that a simple scoreboard alteration will change that, but it will give fantasy owners more incentive to come to games. For years, diehard fantasy players have sat in NFL stadiums and spent most of their time staring at their cell phone's fantasy tracking app.

They might as well stay at home and just watch the game on TV, right? Now, McCarthy says, they won't need to do that.

"We know that many fans sit at home and are watching more than one game and paying attention to many games and statistics," he said. This article was written by Ebenezer Samuel and appeared in The New York Daily News.

Posted by Necesitamos Mas Football on 12:23 p. m.. Filed under . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0