Page 1 of 4

Special Announcement: NFBC/NFFC Acquired By Greg Ambrosius

Posted: Fri Feb 18, 2011 10:36 am
by Greg Ambrosius
I'm proud to announce today that the Asset Purchase Agreement between Liberty Sports Interactive and myself is now official. I have acquired the assets to the NFBC and NFFC going forward and will now run these contests and events in partnership with STATS. I am proud and excited to be able to keep these die-hard fantasy communities together and I'm extremely excited about the future of these products.

As I mentioned above, my first move when I was able to acquire the assets was to reach out to STATS and bring them in as a majority owner. STATS ran the back-end software for the NFBC and NFFC for the first six years of the contest and everyone here knows that they did a first-rate job. The move to the old software for both contests will be seamless and with any luck we'll have our new site up and running early next week. The new URL will be nfbc.stats.com.

I feel that STATS is the perfect partner for our contests going forward and thus we both are now incentivized to grow these contests. In fact, I am joining STATS as the new general manager of consumer fantasy games. We are creating this division to address the need for good, reliable pay consumer fantasy games and together we believe we can expand our menu of offerings beyond the NFBC and NFFC. Look for more details there, but I'm excited about what STATS can provide in the pay games market and I know that the fantasy sports industry needs a reliable game operator who will be around for a long, long time.

But right now we are totally focused on the NFBC and NFFC. The NFBC is the only baseball game we'll be running this season. We are receiving all of the past history, logins, message boards and everything associated with the sites right now. No data was transferred before today, so obviously we have a lot of work to do to make sure everyone's logins remain the same as they were last year and all past history is hooked up to those logins. If all goes well, the new site, Registration and live drafts will be ready to go on Monday.

I'll address all other issues within this thread tonight and over the weekend. I'm just very proud right now and grateful. I'd like to thank Liberty Sports Interactive for working with me right from the start and seeing this through to fruition. LSI has been very professional, honest and straight-forward with me from the start and I appreciate them making this deal with me. They didn't have to. But I think there were special reasons for keeping the NFBC and NFFC together with me and I will forever be in debt to LSI for making this happen. I can't say that enough.

It's unfortunate what happened at Fanball and on Jan. 4th I wasn't sure what my future would look like. 22 years in this industry sure didn't look good on the resume with everything I worked on possibly going away. But LSI kept the hope alive and after 6 1/2 weeks we got it done. I'm ready to take things from here and make this the best event/contest in the industry.

And we're not moving again. STATS is where we are residing from here on out. I'm ALL IN with STATS and STATS is ALL IN with us. This has great, great potential and you'll see that shortly.

Lift a Corona with me tonight (yeah, I'm having one already)!! :D It's time to celebrate and then it's time to GET BUSY!! We have a lot of work today, but tonight is a time to celebrate. The NFBC and NFFC lives on and our future is so bright we've gotta wear shades. Thanks for sticking with us folks and get ready for a contest you'll be proud of again.

Special Announcement: NFBC/NFFC Acquired By Greg Ambrosius

Posted: Fri Feb 18, 2011 10:55 am
by moyer1313
Congratulations, Greg!

I'm glad everything has worked out!

Coronas for everybody! :D

Enjoy one for me,

Mark
Follow Me

Special Announcement: NFBC/NFFC Acquired By Greg Ambrosius

Posted: Fri Feb 18, 2011 11:53 am
by Greg Ambrosius
Just a followup that Fanball is still responsible for paying off all 2010 NFFC winners. I do not know exactly when those checks are going out and I didn't get an answer the last two days when I inquired about that. I know that everything is being processed, but I'm surprised that folks haven't received any checks yet. Hopefully those will go out shortly, but I do realize this is not a good reflection on the NFFC and some owners have certainly told us that. However, going forward we will never pay off our NFFC winners in late February. It's not the best way to run a contest and I can guarantee you that quicker payments will be the norm, just like it was during our first six seasons.

Special Announcement: NFBC/NFFC Acquired By Greg Ambrosius

Posted: Fri Feb 18, 2011 12:14 pm
by Coltsfan
Greg,

That is very good news and I'm really happy for you! I can't imagine how much time and energy you have put into this contest so I'm glad that you'll be able to keep it going and hopefully make it even better.

It sounds like at the end of the day Liberty did the right thing in selling you and Stats the NFFC. I'm really glad they stepped up to the plate and did that. I'm really looking forward to hearing more details about the contest, what changes will be coming, and even more details on who is making all of the decisions. I'm also guessing that Stats will be holding the money for the contest? Either way it would be nice to know.

Good luck with this moving forward Greg and once again, congratulations!


Wayne

Special Announcement: NFBC/NFFC Acquired By Greg Ambrosius

Posted: Fri Feb 18, 2011 1:11 pm
by Greg Ambrosius
Thanks Wayne. I'd have to say I'm making the decisions going forward and taking the heat that goes with it!! :D We had too many cooks in the kitchen last year and that screwed up the dish. Now it's time to get back to the basics for us and our players.

STATS will definitely be holding onto the money and backing this contest financially. I know everyone is happy that Greg and Tom are running the show, but it sure helps to have a monster of a company behind these two pretty faces!! :D STATS is owned by News Corp and Associated Press and not only are they big backers of the NFFC now but they will provide us with great promotional opportunities. I already posted a fantasy baseball column on the AP newswire and Tom will be a weekly football columnist starting this year too. There will be more opportunities like those going forward.

We'll update more soon, but keep the questions coming and we'll get answers to you quickly. We're excited about the future and hopefully our customers are too.

Special Announcement: NFBC/NFFC Acquired By Greg Ambrosius

Posted: Fri Feb 18, 2011 1:35 pm
by Ry's Guys
Congrats Greg! You and this contest deserve each other. Great to hear and can't wait for the exciting news to start rolling in!

I'm a Guinness guy so I'm raising my Guinness to you tonight!
Cheers!

[ February 18, 2011, 07:36 PM: Message edited by: Bullgod ]

Special Announcement: NFBC/NFFC Acquired By Greg Ambrosius

Posted: Fri Feb 18, 2011 1:52 pm
by mattjb
Greg, What about the basketball?

Special Announcement: NFBC/NFFC Acquired By Greg Ambrosius

Posted: Fri Feb 18, 2011 3:15 pm
by RoadKing
Is Tom involved with you and the new group?

Special Announcement: NFBC/NFFC Acquired By Greg Ambrosius

Posted: Fri Feb 18, 2011 3:18 pm
by Greg Ambrosius
Originally posted by mattjb:
Greg, What about the basketball? Fanball will run the NFBBC the rest of the way with our help and will pay off all prizes through the St. Louis offices. The NFBBC will be part of this acquisition, but it won't be official until June. But yes, we have agreed to include the NFBBC and we have big plans for basketball next year. We really believe that we can grow hoops beyond where we are now. Thanks for asking.

Special Announcement: NFBC/NFFC Acquired By Greg Ambrosius

Posted: Fri Feb 18, 2011 3:19 pm
by Greg Ambrosius
Originally posted by RoadKing:
Is Tom involved with you and the new group? Of course he is. We can announce his new title and contact info on Monday.