The Fan-Site Challenge

If you are a regular visitor of this site, then you must have heard about this term, or see banners of other team fan-sites after the Knicks played their team. First of all, what is the fan-site challenge? Well, it's a wager between two sites when their teams are playing. The losing site must keep a custom made banner of the game made by the other site (linking to the winner site) for a week on the homepage. The wager must also be announced (on the homepage or on the forum) by the 2 web-sites before the game starts.

The original idea was to make the game more interesting to watch, and to draw some traffic from the loser web-site.

How did it started?

Back in December, 2003, KnicksOnline.com was contacted by NuggetsHoops.com, with a few days before the game between the Knicks and Nuggets, a game that had Antonio McDyess and Marcus Camby playing their first game against their former teams, about a possible bet between the sites. The Knicks won 95-88 but the sites decided to make a tradition about these challenges, moreover invite more fan-sites.

The wager became popular and it was even featured in the local media, when Alan Switzer, the webmaster of NuggetsHoops.com was interviewed by the Denver Post:
His (Alan's) "FanSite Challenge" with other fan-produced NBA team websites is clever, with "bets" resulting in the losing team's website being forced to feature the winners.

Other sites that accepted, and played at least once are:
Sixers Online
JazzFanz
TwolvesDen.com (currently not working)
Lakers Underground