On our High Stakes Fantasy Advantage show on SiriusXM Fantasy Sports Network, we have a fun segment we call "The Wednesday Night 6-Pack." It's a 6-pack of questions preceded by 6 beers for each of us. Maybe we don't drink them all at once, but the sound of the beer cans opening makes my day every Wednesday!!
So I figured I'd pop them open a little earlier this morning with a 6-pack of questions to start the day. We are so busy trying to fill and fill leagues on these boards that I almost miss the days of smack talk by Gekko and player disputes on the boards. I certainly don't miss some of the other stuff, but I'll step forward and promote the plain ol' football talk again.
Not only that but many of you probably have questions about the NFFC, SportsHub Technologies, me, Tom and Darik, and the NFL in general. We're always available to talk about all of these things. So let's do it.
I'll start with the 6-Pack of Questions and hopefully each of you will follow with a few more. But you must preference each question on this thread this way: "Greg and Tom, I'd like to buy you each a Corona if you'll answer this question...." That will really get us to respond!!
Now you only have to do that on this thread.I'll start and buy myself a 6-pack this morning:
Greg and Tom, I'd like to buy you each a 6-Pack of Coronas if you'll answer the following questions:
1. What are you doing differently this year from a promotional standpoint to sell out NFFC leagues?
We are definitely selling out more online nightly drafts in early August than at any time in our 14-year history. We've made two small additions that have really helped. 1. We added the Chat Roll on the Countdown page and really improved the Countdown page. The Chat Roll seems like a simple addition, but it's been so helpful to talk directly to each of you in real-time as we try to sell out these leagues. We also can see who is checking out these final leagues and sometimes you may even hear from us as we try to fill those final spots. We love the Chat Roll and it's been a great addition thanks to our CDM/SportsHub developers. The Countdown page is now more timely as you can filter just today's offerings or filter by contest or format. I like it.
Secondly, we're actually working with Brady Tinker's company in Dallas on email sends to update current players and past players about openings each night. While we're always working to bring in new customers, it's important to alert our top customers about openings in online leagues that night. We're not trying to overload your email boxes, but a simple email after work each night to discuss the latest openings certainly doesn't hurt. And in fact it really helps. A lot of our signups are coming from that email send and one I sometimes send out at night. Our guys are looking for leagues that will sell out each night, so this alert has really helped out. These additions will be included in baseball and basketball going forward starting with the next seasons.
Going forward we are looking at other promotional ways to spread the word about the NFFC. Tom, Darik and myself will start up a High Stakes Fantasy Advantage podcast soon and post that each day. There's no doubt we can debate a topic a day and get many of our top players on for guest appearances. Let's make the NFBC, NFBKC and NFFC more timely with our players and the rest of the industry. We hope to shoot video in Las Vegas to post on our site in the future, along with posting on You Tube to see how great these live events are. We have SiriusXM Fantasy Sports Radio coming to New York City on Sept. 1st to broadcast the 12-Team Super League Live this year and we're working with FNTSY Sports Network to get them involved in our live drafts as well. The more publicity the better. And we'll even look into Periscope to see if there's something we can broadcast live from the live events to show to the masses. I have an idea that I think a lot of folks will like this football season.
So we're working hard to promote the NFFC like never before. We're getting great support from Rob and everyone at SportsHub Technologies and we know the best is yet to come. We're just getting started here.
2. Is there anything different going on at the live events?
The one difference we are making this year involves the projectors we use to project the draft boards. We have invested in HD projectors and will have those at most every draft in Las Vegas and New York City. We've had good HD projectors before, but we bought all new HD projectors, which will really make those boards pop on the screen. This is the third set of projectors we've purchased since changing to this format and nobody else in the industry does this at their live events. Those projectors save time in placing the names on the boards and immediately enters the picks into the draft software. These football drafts will now look better, will likely conclude in 2 hours and will be smooth as silk. One day we'll just have one person enter those picks on an iPad and walk around the room with it. We're really becoming more efficient each time at these live events.
The change in New York City comes with us going back to Hotel Penn. We know the guest rooms may not be the newest in Manhattan, but the ballrooms work perfectly and the location next to Penn Station works for a lot of New Yorkers. Andy will find an Irish Pub to party at on Friday night and there are plenty of nearby hotels to stay at. We have SiriusXM and FNTSY Sports Network ready to make you folks stars in the industry, so it's all good. In Las Vegas, we are sooooo lucky to get space again at the Bellagio. A few years ago Brady said to me at the end of a football draft, "Don't ever take the Bellagio for granted." And I always remember that as we renegotiate for space. To me it's the best hotel in Las Vegas at the best location. They've treated us so well and having the Monet ballrooms for this year's drafts is PERFECT. Those ballrooms are reserved for weddings with the balconies overlooking the pools and for some reason there are no weddings there both weekends. We do have to move the drafts to Aria on Friday (and two on Thursday morning), but we'll make that work. My old sales rep at the Bellagio is at Aria and she's saved us good space at a good price. We'll make that work, so plan accordingly. I'll make sure everyone finds that space easily. It's the price we have to pay this year for staying at the Bellagio this year. Now I need to start working on March because our baseball drafts will start on March Madness Opening Weekend and that should be CRAZY!!
3. How are signups going in the NFFC?
Football is the toughest sport for us because everyone waits until the last moment to sign up. When it's nightly online drafts, those sell out at the last minute every night. When it's Primetime or Classic, people wait as long as possible to fill those up and have us charge them. It's okay, we're used to the routine, but every game operator deals with that in football. But this year we seem to be selling out more online drafts earlier than ever before. The Rotowire Online Championship feels really good right now with drafts selling out every night and sometimes even 2 or 3 in one day. We know the last two weeks will be crazy, but this sure seems like a sellout is coming. We lowered the expectations of the NFFC Cutline Championship from 2,800 teams to 2,100 teams this year to make winning the overall more reasonable. That one started out slowly, but is picking up steam. I still think it will be the best ROI we offer here, so grab a few of those teams. We have almost 340 Primetime teams and over 170 Classic teams with goals of 540 and 266 respectively. So we're on the right path and now need to close these babies out. the auctions are almost all full, the Platinum is full, the 14-Team Ultimate is full, the 14-Team Kickoff Gridiron is full. There's a lot of sold out leagues already. So far so good, but we know how important these next 32 days are going to be.
4. How is the transition from STATS to SportsHub Technologies going?
It couldn't be going better. This acquisition happened in October, so we knew that we needed time to re-create the NFBC, NFFC and NFBKC sites, so we made a deal with STATS to stay on our platform for each sport for a full year. Both the NFFC and NFBKC will have the back-end software through STATS for this season, but starting with NFBC in November of 2018 everything will be run by SportsHub. We now have had plenty of time to perfect FAAB, build the back-end game engine, create the home pages, contest pages and everything else associated with the contests. We already have the Registration on our site and run payments through CDM. We'll add the eWallet system shortly and will pay our baseball winners through their Player Accounts. Once that money is deposited in their Accounts, each player will then decide how they want to use that money, whether it's receiving some or all of that money via check or if they want to use that money to spend on other games. Prize money will now be deposited quicker and used the way you want it.
We are also updating so many things on our web sites. The tech team has been fantastic as we improve the Draft Champions formats going forward, the FAAB, creating one page to find players on all of your teams, creating one page to find free agents for all your teams, and more. We've had meetings to analyze all aspects of our contests and tried to figure out how to improve them. Getting you to Register for contests on your phones, to draft on your phones, to make FAAB moves on your phones are all in the works and should be ready for baseball and all other sports after that. Tech-wise we have a dedicated staff to help us at all times, so if you have suggestions send our way.
Promotionally we now have more ways to cross promote to all of our customers and more ways to attract new customers. The introduction of Fanball in the next couple of weeks will really be something to watch. Stay tuned for more on the DFS addition.
5. What is Fanball? Didn't Fanball.com once own the NFFC?
Oh sure, you couldn't even wait for me to finish that last beer before exploding with another one. Okay, I can handle it. I was ready for it.
The two guys who started Fanball and Fantasy Football Weekly back in the mid-1990's were Rob Phythian and Paul Charchian. They transitioned to Fanball.com quickly and had one of the top football sites in the industry for many years. They sold Fanball.com to Fun Technologies in the summer of 2005 for a reported $22 million, the highest selling price of a private company in the industry at that time. Fun Technologies later bought CDM Fantasy Sports and merged those two fantasy game companies. At some point Fun Technologies was sold to Liberty Media and Liberty chose the management team at CDM to run the fantasy games division rather than sticking with the Minneapolis office. That's where Ryan Houston came in and he bought our contests and our magazines. We were at the revised Fanball.com for 18 months before Liberty dissolved everything. Fortunately, they saw that I was collateral damage in a short time and did the right thing in selling the assets back to me to keep the NFBC, NFFC and NFBKC alive and well. We quickly reached out to STATS for the back-end, sold most of the assets to them and worked well together from 2011 to 2016. But a change in direction and ownership happened there as well and it was time to move on.
Interestingly, Rob had a hand in that transition. He created a competitor to STATS in the sports statistics business and that company was eventually sold to Sport Radar, a large data company in Europe that was looking for a footprint in the United States. Sport Radar then hired Steve Byrd, who many of you may remember from our time together at STATS, and now Sport Radar is a huge competitor to STATS as they have become the official stat service for the NFL, NBA, NASCAR and NHL. It made sense for STATS to concentrate on their core business and when Rob approached them to buy our game assets for his new company, it made sense all around. Rob and I are good friends, so I was ready for the move. But seeing all that is going on now makes me feel even better as we have more tech, more promotions and more game possibilities than ever before. I think the move is going to be great for us and also for CDM and LeagueSafe.
6. What have you learned from the debut of the NFFC $25s and $50s?
We learned that people love "best ball" leagues. We knew that before, but this is really bringing it out. And we also learned that if given the choice they want best ball leagues that draft every night rather than in slow draft formats. We are selling out these $25 Express Leagues every night at 8 and 10 pm ET and these are selling 2 to 1 to the slow drafts. That's great because we knew that these nightly drafts had great potential. It's a great way to bring in new customers to the NFFC, to have drafts every night and to have even better ADPs. We love them.
Hope this helps. Now pour me another one bartender!! You're up.