Comparison of NFFC & WCOFF Request

[Greg Ambrosius]

Liquid, first of all congrats on the newborn. I have three little ones myself and yesterday was my girl's fifth birthday party. Nothing like the little ones to keep you grounded and happy. Enjoy the time with the newborn and we'll get down and dirty for you in Sin City.

While I have 15 years of good standing in the industry, that is secondary to the fact that we have a proven track record with the multi-city high stakes event. We had 232 total signups for our National Fantasy Baseball Championship and the drafts in New York, Las Vegas and Chicago went off without a hitch. We had sponsors pay for the drinks at the Welcome Receptions, we gave away goodie bags valued at over $100 each and we added two weekly prizes with retail values of over $15,000. Our contest has gone off very smoothly and all of the races are competitive, with the race to the $100,000 grand prize being closely contested.

But more importantly, we guaranteed the prize structure we had set up at the beginning of the contest even though we fell short of our desired goal of 300 teams. We bit the bullet -- much like Lenny and Emil did during the first year of the WCOFF -- as we proved that we're in this for the long haul, not the short gain.

As for promotions, first and foremost we're hopeful that our 200+ NFBC members enjoy themselves so much that they join us for football as well. I think we'll easily get at least half of those guys to compete in football and many owners are bringing friends to the NFFC because they had so much fun in baseball. Ken Magner, Sack as most people know him, has signed up for all three NFFC events in New York even though he's doing the WCOFF the following weekend in Las Vegas and has at least two other buddies signed up with more on the way. You can't pay for that kind of promotional help.

But we also have ads in Athlon's NFL Preview magazine (500,000 circulation with a half-page color ad), Fantasy Football Index and six of our own fantasy football titles, including Fantasy Sports Magazine (2 issues, a cover tease and four pages of editorial), FantasyGuru.com Fantasy Football, RotoWire.com Fantasy Football, RotoTimes.com Fantasy Football and Tuff Stuff Fantasy Football. We have been running a display classified ad in USA Today Sports Weekly for the last four weeks and will run that through July and August again. You can find our buttons and banners on a lot of industry web sites, especially on Fanball.com, RotoTimes.com, RotoWire.com and RotoWorld.com. We also have a 25,000+ weekly fantasy sports newsletter that goes out with promotions for the NFFC in that and we'll get involved with footballguys.com promotionally in July and August as well. We will have a strong presence at the ESPN Radio 1000 Fantasy Football Conference in August and advertise with them during August. We are working with a very reputable football tout service that has a mailing to 80,000 "players" that we'll be involved in during mid-July with a special offer to join the NFFC. So we do have an aggressive plan in place.

Is it enough? We'll see. There are a lot of good contests out there and it's tough to stand out in a crowd, but we'll do everything we can to reach our goal. I think we'll have a strong draw in New York City and Chicago, two cities that don't have competing events. It's fun to see so many WCOFF names who are adding the New York draft to their September calendar. I see no reason why we won't get die-hard fantasy football players who want a second chance to win a $200,000 grand prize and can do so without the same travel costs.

I like our chances because I like the group we've assembled with our National Fantasy Baseball Championship (www.fantasybaseballchampionship.com) and the same first-class group of players will be assembed for the NFFC. I'll continue to post our progress online and give straight answers, even when the situation is tough, as it was for a time with the NFBC. But with everyone's help, we'll create a contest of 602 teams in three cities and expand to even more cities in the near future. We'll be honored to add the Liquid Empire to our growing NFFC family and any other evil empires (sorry, that's aimed at George Steinbrenner) who want to compete.

See you on Sept. 3-4!

[Dyv]

I just want to make it clear that I thoroughly enjoyed my events with the WCOFF, too. If the dates worked better for me this year, I would have done the Chicago NFCC and the WCOFF Vegas... but no way will Mrs. Dyv let me get out to Vegas for 2 weekends in a row or for the 8 days straight to accomodate the events

That and I want to go to the FSTA conference this year which makes the events easier to manage.

It's so hard to measure the draft-day experience... and I would still rather see a big money fantasy football game give more to leagues and less to overall, but I guess that doesn't advertise as well.

In either case, paying out over 60% after all the costs for the conference rooms, draft equipment, draft moderators, advertising, etc., etc. - is pretty darn fair IMHO.

I think Lenny & Emil run a class act in football - and I also have never heard anyone complain their satisfaction with the events.

Good luck, Liquid - we'll remember to have a drink to ya out in Vegas

Dave

[JB]

So...how many people do you have signed up so far?

[Greg Ambrosius]

We're still giving out autographed photos to the first 100 signups, so we haven't topped that mark officially yet. But that being said, there are several NFBC guys who said they will sign up soon, but right now they are knee deep in baseball. I certainly understand that and realize our promotions will take time until we get official signups at $1,250 each. The same thing happened in baseball.

But the response has been positive and our NFBC guys are proof that we'll run a first-class event/contest. We'll reach our desired level, even if the signups come later rather than sooner.