FSI NEWS

NEW & IMPROVED! Updated Tournament Support
We just updated our tournament support for promoters running single- or double-elimination tournaments. With Fight Sports Insider's tournament support, running a tournament is easier, more flexible, and less costly than ever before.

If you are promoting a kickboxing, Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, grappling, and/or MMA tournament, you might find the following capabilities useful to help you put on a successful event:

• Online registration - you get your funds immediately
• Automatic bracket population - competitors register directly into your brackets
• Automatic creation of brackets and automatic advancement of winners (and losers for double-elimination brackets)
• Great flexibility - you can have single-elimiation, double-elimination, and/or matches that are not part of brackets; you control seeding; support for multiple sports (kickboxing, grappling/BJJ, MMA); use of standard or custom age & weight classes; and more!
• Easily communicate amongst officials & staff - officials will have no confusion about who's fighting next; they can enter results when matches complete and they're immediately available to competitors, attendees, judges, etc.
• Easily communicate with competitors & attendees - brackets, seeding, competitor information, and results will all be online and people will be able to easily help themselves get answers to all the questions promoters and staff typically answer throughout more tournaments.
• Low cost - one low fee enables all this functionality for an unlimited number of competitors & brackets

More details to be posted later today.

In the mean time, if you have questions, feature requests, suggestions, or any other feedback, please send us an email.



Promoter Tip
Did you know that you can promote your kickboxing events and Muay Thai events FOR FREE on Fight Sports Insider?

Just create your account and add your events. It's that simple. A time investment of approximately 10 minutes can give you thousands of impressions to get the word out about your event!

Follow the instructions on the GET STARTED page.

If you have questions, feature requests, suggestions, or any other feedback, please send us an email.



Where Are The Results?
We got some great feedback about how it's not obvious how to get to fight results. While we're working out the designs to make FSI easier to use, here is some info about how to find results for kickboxing and Muay Thai events.

If you want to see the results for a kickboxing event, click the EVENTS tab at the top of the screen and then click the name of the event.
			We organize events by upcoming events (listed in the top group on the events page) and past events (listed in the bottom group).
For future kickboxing events or events that happened more than a few weeks ago, click the "More Events" checkbox on the events page and you can pick the year, month, or event country and state to find exactly what you're after.

And if you have feature requests, suggestions, or any other feedback, please send us an email.



Attention Fighters
We've added a number of kickboxing events and fighters recently. Be sure to check your profile, stats, and fight record for accuracy. How? Click the COMPETITORS tab at the top and use the search box to find your entry. If you find any inaccuracies or missing events, please let us know.

Be sure to include pointers to the kickboxing event(s) and results, the promoter, and the sanctioning body or athletic commission that oversaw the missing events. We'll do what we can to get the official results and enter them into the database. And you can help ensure your data gets into the database by contacting them, too!

If you're not in the database yet, click 'sign up' at the top of the page. If you're already in the database, you can claim your fighter profile so that you can update your profile picture, address, contact info for matchmakers to reach you, etc. Follow the instructions on the GET STARTED page.

And if you have feature requests, suggestions, or any other feedback, please send us an email.



What is Fight Sports Insider?
Fight Sports Insider (FSI) is the only independent database of kickboxing and Muay Thai events, results, and fighter stats. FSI works with sanctioning bodies and athletic commissions to ensure legitimate, accurate data.

FSI is still in beta. This means that we're focused on establishing processes with commissions, sanctioning bodies, promoters, and fighters to make it as easy as possible to get accurate data into the database. It also means that we're not yet focused on polishing up the user interface - we'll get there soon enough.

To be clear, the data that's in the system is as accurate as we have been able to verify with the organizations who provided it - and of course through our own research. But if you run across anything that doesn't look right, please let us know and we'll jump on it.



2011 Association of Boxing Commissions (ABC) Annual Meeting
FSI was at the annual ABC meeting in Washington, DC, in early August. It was great to finally meet so many commission members in person!



2011 IKF World Classic Results
FSI was at the IKF's 2011 World Classic Kickboxing & Muay Thai tournament over the weekend in Orlando. We are testing some new functionality and the IKF invited us to capture data as it happens.

We were posting results live but we had to stop about half way through the Sunday finals to catch our flight. When the IKF submits the remaining fight results, we will post them immediately.

Congratulations to those of you who competed (especially the champs), and thanks to the IKF for inviting us to the event!



Fight Sports Insider and seeme active

Even though we're not advertising yet (since we're still in beta), a few people have stumbled upon the site and have asked how Fight Sports Insider relates to seemeactive.com.
	The primary difference is that seemeactive is focused on helping individual fighters & competitors permanently capture and share their own results and stats, whereas Fight Sports Insider expands and generalizes that concept to events, promoters, sanctioniong bodies, and groups of fighters & competitors. A more subtle point is that Fight Sports Insider does not show seemeactive users' kickboxing data because it's not sanctioned or otherwise official. But you can see your Fight Sports Insider data from your seemeactive.com account.
We will enhance the user experience for seemeactive users as we get more feedback and gain a better of what's important for our users.

Fight Sports Insider Beta Testing FAQs
The following questions have come up during beta testing:

• Does it cost anything to enter events?
  No. Entering events is free and they show up in the overall event listing.
   
  
• Will there be a fee for posting events after the beta period ends?
  No, not for the basic event list.
   
  But there will be a fee for displaying events in the featured-events listing that shows throughout the site, and there will be premium-listing options as well. The premium listings will be graphical, standard-ad images.
   
  
• How do I get contact info for fighters?
  Promoters interested in contacting fighters they find in Fight Sports Insider during the beta period should email Fight Sports Insider to get contact info.
   
  
• I have an idea to improve FSI for my organization. How do I request it?
  Send an email to Fight Sports Insider with your request, no matter how big or small.

Fight Sports Insider Enters Beta Testing
Private testing has concluded and the site is now available for beta testing. Fight Sports Insider is working with sanctioning bodies and promoters to confirm that the event creation, fighter searches, fighter profile editing, fight card editing, and results-capture meet their needs.

Send an email if you have any questions.



FSI Enters Strategic Agreement With IKF
The challenge for kickboxing sanctioning bodies to ensure that they have reliable information for events they sanction took an important step forward with the announcement today that the International Kickboxing Federation (IKF) has entered into a strategic agreement with Competition Technology for an independent database and web service. The IKF - a worldwide sanctioning body for both professional and amateur Kickboxing & Mauy Thai events - has agreed to adopt usage of the new database and web service - named "Fight Sports Insider" - from Competition Technology.

Fight Sports Insider will be made available through a web site that is currently in final testing and is expected to be available at the end of the year. It will enable sanctioning bodies to get reliable information for events they sanction. This would include information like fighters' win-loss records, the sanctioning body for a given fight, promoter details, event officials, rule styles, weight classes etc.

"There is currently no existing solution dedicated to this need and the final product has always seemed to be out of reach," said IKF President and CEO Steve Fossum. "We sanction hundreds of events and we devote a great deal of time and resources ensure the legitimacy of the events we sanction. There have been multiple efforts to address this need in the past by other sanctioning bodies but none have succeeded, so we're excited that there's finally a technology company like Competition Technology that's focused on independently serving the needs of sanctioning bodies like the IKF."

In addition to helping sanctioning bodies, the Fight Sports Insider kickboxing & Muay Thai service can help increase fighter safety. Sanctioning bodies and matchmakers will find it easier to avoid pairing fighters with experience mismatches, or inadvertently allowing professionals to fight as amateurs, etc. The need for such functionality surfaced during the beta-testing period that the IKF entered into in April 2010.

John Tafoya, Founder and General Manager of Competition Technology, said: "We are very excited that the IKF has agreed to adopt Fight Sports Insider. We're thankful for the invaluable feedback we've received during beta testing from one of the world's leading kickboxing and Muay Thai sanctioning bodies. The IKF's feedback during testing will help ensure the relevance and usefulness of the service."

Under the agreement, the IKF will continue as a strategic advisor for Fight Sports Insider and will receive further customizations to the existing tournament-management solution provided by Competition Technology for the IKF's annual World Classic tournaments - including IKF event branding in Competition Technology's seemeactive.com service. Competition Technology will get premium-placement advertising on ikfkickboxing.com and will be the exclusive technology provider for the IKF World Classic tournaments.

Tafoya added that "We are hopeful that IKF's leadership and vision for this independent, organization-neutral service will lead to adoption from other sanctioning bodies as we finish this testing phase and release the service to the web."